ebXML Founding Organizations and Process

During its 18-month development phase, November 1999 to May 2001, the ebXML initiative operated under a joint agreement of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards ( OASIS ) and the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business ( UN/CEFACT ).

OASIS is a membership consortium of businesses, mainly software vendors , for the development of specifications based on public standards for structured documents, such as SGML and XML. It organizes working groups on these specifications, which have developed conformance test suites and a registry of XML vocabularies, known as XML.org . OASIS also hosts the XML-DEV listserv, the developer of SAX (see Chapter 4), as well as the comprehensive XML Cover Pages, an exhaustive resource of developments involving XML.[43]

UN/CEFACT is the UN's agency for developing worldwide policies to encourage trade, especially in the context of emerging economies. Given their mandate , electronic business has always been a special focus, as access to world markets is key to development. Officially, UN/CEFACT falls under the Economic Commission for Europe, but its scope cuts across regions , and more than 1,500 public and private sector experts take part in its work. UN/CEFACT focuses much of its efforts on increasing the participation of smaller businesses in global trade and reducing bureaucratic barriers to trade, by standardizing documents and data formats. Among UN/CEFACT's working groups is one responsible for maintaining the UN/EDIFACT traditional EDI standard, as well as a business process group that has researched the potential of object-oriented development technologies.[44]

UN/CEFACT is a recognized international standards organization. It is one of the signatories to a March 2000 memorandum of understanding with the International Electrotechnical Commission ( IEC ), the International Organization for Standardization (French acronym ISO ), and the International Telecommunication Union ( ITU ). This memorandum divides responsibilities for standards development and gives UN/CEFACT responsibility for those standards related to e-business.[45]

During its development phase, the ebXML initiative kept its bureaucracy to a bare minimum. It had no permanent staff and relied almost entirely on volunteers. A chair, vice chair , and two other executive committee members comprised the official leadership, with two members of the leadership from OASIS and two from UN/CEFACT. The following project teams , led and staffed by volunteers, performed all of the work:

• ebXML Requirements

• Business Process Methodology

• Technical Architecture

• Core Components

• Transport/Routing and Packaging

• Security

• Registry and Repository

• Quality Review

• Proof of Concept

• Trading Partners Profiles

• Marketing, Awareness and Education

The initiative made it easy to take part in ebXML. It imposed neither membership fees nor requirements to attend meetings or take part in conference calls. Enrolling required completion of a simple online form and selection of the project teams in which to participate.

The ebXML teams and leadership met quarterly. The quarterly meetings began in July 1999 and finished in May 2001, taking place in North America, Europe, and Asia. Participation at the meetings, like the listservs, was open to anyone , although meeting organizers collected a nominal meeting fee to help defray expenses.

The teams developed the specifications and technical reports in the quarterly meetings, as well as through telephone conference calls and the listservs established for each team. Once the teams felt they had enough of the issues resolved to open for public comments, the draft specifications were posted on the ebXML web site for review.

Anyone could download and comment on the draft specifications and technical reports; commentators weren't required to be ebXML participants . A quality-review team maintained consistency among the various documents. Specifications went through at least two iterations of public review, while technical reports had one public review. Specifications contained the official ebXML rules, called normative documents. Technical reports contained advisory and preliminary information, such as guidelines or examples of output. ebXML published the work on core components as technical reports rather than full specifications, since it had not had enough time to complete its detailed development.

Since the end of the development phase in May 2001, OASIS and UN/CEFACT divided the continuation of the ebXML work, with OASIS taking the infrastructure project teams and UN/CEFACT keeping those teams working on business content.The infrastructure teams operating under OASIS include transport-routing-packaging, registry/repository, trading partners, and security. It also took the proof-of-concept team that will work on conformance testing and implementation assistance. The UN/CEFACT teams include business process and core components. A joint management group will provide coordination, as well as carry on the work of the technical architecture and marketing teams.