UBL 2.0 approved as an OASIS Committee Specification

[jon.bosak@sun.com]

Hello UBL TC,

I am delighted to report that UBL 2.0 has been approved as an
OASIS Committee Specification.  The ballot, supervised by OASIS,
closed last night with a unanimous vote to approve.  This means
that UBL 2.0 is now an official OASIS specification available for
general implementation.

Pursuant to our vote to approve, the new CS has been submitted to
OASIS for standardization.  Assuming that it meets all OASIS
administrative requirements, the CS will be published to the
organizational members of OASIS at the beginning of November for a
two-week familiarization period and will then undergo balloting by
the organizational members during the second half of the month.
If all goes well, we should be able to announce ratification of
UBL 2.0 as an OASIS Standard in early to mid December.

I'd like to emphasize, however, that our work on UBL 2.0 is far
from complete.  At next month's TC meeting in Singapore, we will
begin the next major phases of development -- the creation of the
Support Package and the localized versions of the specification.
Over the coming months, we must also complete several ancillary
documents intended for eventual CS status in their own right;
these include the UBL 2.0 Naming and Design Rules (currently out
for public review), the UBL Code List Value Validation
Methodology, the UBL Customization Methodology, the UBL 2.0 Small
Business Subset, and (if we can find the resources) the UBL 2.0
input and output specifications and perhaps even ISO RELAX NG
versions of the UBL schemas.  We must also begin gathering input
for UBL 2.1, though given everything else we have to do, I do not
expect actual development work on 2.1 to start before 2008.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to our success in
completing the first phase of the UBL 2.0 development cycle.  I
look forward to working with you all as we move into deployment.

Jon

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Jon Bosak, Distinguished Engineer, Corporate Standards
Office of Global Government Strategy, Sun Microsystems
     Chair, OASIS Universal Business Language TC
jon.bosak@sun.com         http://www.sun.com/standards
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