OASIS UBL Committee Adds Insurance

Joining other industry standards groups, ACORD (the Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development) — an insurance industry organization — today announced that it is appointing a representative to OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL) Technical Committee.

Formed last October, the goal of the OASIS UBL committtee is to define a set of XML building blocks and a framework to enable trading partners to identify and exchange business documents (e.g., purchase orders, invoices, and shipping notices) in specific contexts (see OASIS Forms Universal Business Language Committee).

“ACORD has been a long-time advocate of working with other organizations to achieve interoperability across industries,” said Gregory Maciag, CEO of ACORD. “Insurance is not only a vertical market, but also an integral part of international supply chain management. The UBL effort brings together major players in the standards arena to develop ebXML [Electronic Business XML] compliant solutions. This is very important to our industry.”

Liaisons to the UBL coordinate the review of standard XML business schemas as they become available. Other organizations that have representatives on the technical committee include the following:

• ARTS — the Association for Retail Technology Standards is a division of the National Retail Federation with members from all retail formats and channels of distribution, including department, specialty, discount, catalog, Internet and independent stores.
• ASC X12 — the Accredited Standards Committee X12 serves as the entry point for the United States into the United Nations/Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport.
• EIDX — the Electronics Industry Data Exchange Association is a section of the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA).
• RosettaNet — a nonprofit consortium dedicated to the development and deployment of standard electronic business interfaces.
• XBRL — the Extensible Business Reporting Language international consortium comprises accounting standards bodies, accounting firms, technology companies, financial information providers, corporations and government regulatory bodies.

“Input from these industry groups ensures that UBL reflects the needs of the marketplace,” said Jon Bosak of Sun Microsystems, chair of the OASIS UBL Technical Committee and organizer of the working group that created XML. “Our goal of defining a common XML library for basic business documents crosses all industries.”

The UBL builds on the ebXML (electronic business XML) infrastructure developed by OASIS and the United Nations. The ebXML specifications provide for XML registry services, reliable XML messaging, standardized trading partner agreements, a standard data dictionary and a business context methodology.

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