ebXML

Electronic Business using eXtensible Markup Language (commonly known as ebXML) is a family of XML based standards sponsored by the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). ebXML was created to provide an open, XML-based infrastructure that enables the global use of electronic business information in an interoperable, secure, and consistent manner by all trading partners. Standards bodies like the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) were also involved in the initial development.^[1]^[2]

History

ebXML was started in November 1999 as a joint initiative between the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). At that time, the groups viewed several roadblocks to allowing "anyone, anywhere to do business with anyone else"^[3]:

The ebXML initiative was conceived due to the widely held need to enable enterprises of any size and in any geographical location to conduct business electronically in a simple, cheap reliable way. There are technologies that currently exist to perform electronic trading, such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), (and it should be noted they perform this task very well) but they are often costly to implement, the information itself is not human readable and the these technologies often require the use of private, fee paying networks.

The group created a set of technical and business principles that guided their development during the core design phase of the project, including avoiding proprietary solutions and including multilingual support. The core project also envisioned five layers of data specification, including XML standards for business processes, core data components, collaboration protocol agreements, messaging tools, and registries and repositories.^[1] The core part of the project was completed in May 2001, laying out the architecture and base standards. After the core work was completed, the two organizations agreed to split further development responsibilities for the various specifications but continued oversight through the group's Joint Coordination Committee (JCC).^[3]^[4]

After completion of the specifications by the two organizations, five portions of the work were submitted to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical Committee 154 for approval. The ISO approved the following five ebXML specifications as the ISO 15000 standard, under the general title Electronic Business Extensible Markup Language (ebXML). The first four were approved in 2004^[5], with the fifth, the CCTS, realizing approval in 2005:

ISO/TS 15000-1:2004: Collaboration-protocol profile and agreement specification (ebCPP)^[6]
ISO/TS 15000-2:2004: Message service specification (ebMS)^[7]
ISO/TS 15000-3:2004: Registry information model specification (ebRIM)^[8]
ISO/TS 15000-4:2004: Registry services specification (ebRS)^[9]
ISO/TS 15000-5:2005: ebXML Core Components Technical Specification, Version 2.01 (ebCCTS)^[10]

The OASIS technical committees and UN/CEFACT retained the responsibility for maintaining and advancing the above specifications. Note that while the ebXML standards adopted by ISO and OASIS seek to provide formal XML-enabled mechanisms that can be implemented directly, the ebXML architecture is based on concepts and methodologies that can be more broadly applied to allow practitioners to better implement e-business solutions.

In 2007, several public organizations were stated to have implemented ebXML standards, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Department of Defense, The Port of Hong Kong, the government of Norway, and the government of Denmark.^[11]

Architecture

Collaborative Partner Profile Agreement

Collaborative Partner Profile Agreements are XML based documents specifying a trading agreement between trading partners. Each trading partner will have their own Collaboration Protocol Profile (CPP) document that describes their abilities in an XML format. For instance, this can include the messaging protocols they support, or the security capabilities they support. A CPA (Collaboration Protocol Agreement) document is the intersection of two CPP documents, and describes the formal relationship between two parties. The following information will typically be contained in a CPA document:

Identification information: the unique identifiers for each party and their roles within the trading relationship
Security information: for instance, are digital signatures required, and what algorithms do they use & communication information: the protocols that will be used when exchanging documents
Endpoint locations: the URL, service and action messages should be sent to
Rules to follow when acknowledgments are not received for messages, including how long to wait before resending, and how many times to resend
Whether duplicate messages should be ignored
Whether acknowledgments are required for all messages

Messaging Service Specification

The Message Service Specification (ebMS) describes a communication-neutral mechanism Message Service Handlers (MSH) must implement in order to exchange business documents. ebMS3.0 is the current version of the specification. ebMS3.0 is built as an extension on top of the SOAP with Attachments specification. The SOAP message contains the meta-data required to exchange the business document in a secure and reliable manner, while the business payload is attached to the SOAP message. Multiple business payloads may be attached to a single message, and the format of the payloads is beyond the scope of the ebXML specifications. The information trading partners place in ebMS messages is largely dictated by the CPA agreement that defines the relationship between them. The following information is typically contained within ebMS messages: