The United Nations body for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) have joined forces to initiate a worldwide project to standardize XML business specifications. UN/CEFACT and OASIS have established the Electronic Business XML initiative to develop a technical framework that will enable XML to be utilized in a consistent manner for the exchange of all electronic business data. Industry groups currently working on XML specifications have been invited to participate in the 18-month project.

The Electronic Business XML (ebXML) initiative is a joint effort between OASIS (the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) and UN/CEFACT (the United Nation's body for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business) to create a global XML framework for electronic business. ebXML will enable both large and small to medium sized companies to participate in electronic data interchange without having to understand anything about the underlying technology that makes it happen. As an active participant in the ebXML initiative, Sun is closely involved in the open process to help define the specifications.

Which organizations are currently working on the development of ebXML and where can they be found? The intention behind this page was to create a guide for the ebXML initiative, since its projects are distributed between organisations. It was confusing for me in the beginning to find the right project with the right information, so I hope that this guide helps to improve access to the project sites and their deliverables.

Adobe announced the acquisition of Yellow Dragon Software--which makes an off-the-shelf Electronic Business eXtensible Markup Language (ebXML) application--and that its technology will be incorporated into Adobe enterprise-level PDF software.

ebXML is governed by OASIS. It should be noted that many of the specifications that are in ebXML have significant overlap with many of the new specifications coming out of IBM and Microsoft. For now, industries are being forced to choose between the competing specifications. It is anticipated that in the near future, one of the efforts will subsume the other or efforts will be made to make them compatible.

DISA (the Data Interchange Standards Association) has announced a "working prototype of a registry for electronic business specifications from two of its vertical industry organizations: the Interactive Financial Exchange (IFX) Forum and the OpenTravel Alliance (OTA)."

WebLogic Integration supports a routing architecture that allows it to manage the exchange of XOCP, RosettaNet, cXML, and ebXML messages. Trading partners using WebLogic Integration can therefore exchange business messages using any of these business protocols.

The ebXML control enables WebLogic Workshop business processes to exchange business messages and data with trading partners via ebXML. The ebXML control supports both the ebXML 1.0 and ebXML 2.0 messaging services. You use ebXML controls in initiator business processes to manage the exchange of ebXML business messages with participants.

Alan Kotok writes about how the Australian government has combined with standards authorities and technology vendors to build a national e-business network for small companies.

The ebxmlrr project [1] of freebxml.org [2] is pleased to announce a new production-ready release of its ebXML Registry: ebxmlrr 2.1-final1. An XML registry/repository is a critical piece of infrastructure for organizations to increase the efficiency of their business. The XML registry/repository is a versatile tool which helps to given employees, customers, and partners (internally and externally) scaleable, searchable, customizable, and secure role based access to critical information using standard protocols. The repository can store XML, web services, or any other type of data, and the registry manages the entire life cycle of information in the repository using sophisticated meta-data technology.

Welcome to the core components team site. The initial phase of ebXML is now complete and you can download the Core Component Technical Reports from this page. Comments regarding contents and layout of this site should be sent to the editor/web developer James Whittle.

The ebXML sample demonstrates how two trading partners can exchange business messages using the ebXML business protocol. The ebXML sample application is provided in the SAMPLES_HOME\integration\samples\ebxml directory, where SAMPLES_HOME represents the WebLogic Platform samples directory.

OASIS and UN/CEFACT will cosponsor ebXML Showcase, a special two-day event at XML Europe 2003, 5-6 May 2003 in London.

We are writing to you on behalf of UN/CEFACT, the United Nations body whose mandate covers worldwide policy and technical development in the area of trade facilitation and electronic business. To facilitate global business exchanges and to make them a reality for all users, we strongly support the development and implementation of open, interoperable, international standards and specifications. More information on UN/CEFACT can be found on our Web site www.unece.org /cefact.

HCCO announces that Drummond Group Inc. is performing interoperability testing for ebXML MS version 2.0 from Sept 15 – Nov 7, 2003. This ebXML Interoperability test is sponsored by HCCO and UCC.

Members of the OASIS ebXML Registry Technical Committee have completed a revised Registry Services Specification which "defines the interface to the ebXML Registry Services as well as interaction protocols, message definitions and XML schema." Appendix B of the version 1.01 specification supplies the ebXML Registry DTD Definition; Appendix A entitled "Web Service Architecture" provides a WSDL Terminology Primer, Registry Service Abstract Specification, and Registry Service SOAP Binding.

Asian countries are gearing themselves up for the adoption of ebXML. In the fifth ebXML Asia Committee Meeting, held from 18th - 19th April [2002] in Chinese Taipei, the representatives from Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka (UNCTAD) and Thailand congregated to work on the measure for ebXML promotion and implementation in Asia.

All WebLogic Workshop controls follow a consistent model. Many aspects of using ebXML controls are identical or similar to using other WebLogic Workshop controls. To learn about WebLogic Workshop controls, see Using Built-In Java Controls.

An e-mail recently graced my inbox that caused me to ponder these questions. For you to understand why I had this reaction, some background may be in order, especially if you're not familiar with this little corner of the arcane world of standards.

The ebXML project received a boost recently as Sun released a J2EE-based implementation of the ebXML Registry/Repository, and the Open Applications Group Inc. announced the incorporation of ebXML into their canon of business transaction standards.