Universal Business Language

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From the OASIS Site:

UBL, the Universal Business Language, is the product of an international effort to define a royalty-free library of standard electronic XML business documents such as purchase orders and invoices. Developed in an open and accountable OASIS Technical Committee with participation from a variety of industry data standards organizations, UBL is designed to plug directly into existing business, legal, auditing, and records management practices, eliminating the re-keying of data in existing fax- and paper-based supply chains and providing an entry point into electronic commerce for small and medium-sized businesses.

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ubl/faq.php

UBL version 2.0 was approved as an OASIS Committee Specification in October 2006 and is scheduled for public release by the end of the year.

As part of the Northern European cooperation on e-commerce and e-procurement, representatives from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, UK and Iceland have set up a working group for developing a Northern European subset of UBL 2.0 documents. The main focus of NES is to define the semantic use of UBL 2.0 as applied to specific business processes. To achieve this the UBL 2.0 standard is restriced on additional levels by using profiles that apply to defined business situations and the use of individual elements is specifically descibed to avoid conflicting interpretation. Additionally each country has developed guidelines that describe the application of the NESUBL supset to domestic business practices. The goal is to enable companies and institutions to implement e-commerce by agreeing to a specific profile and thus eliminate the need for bilateral implementation. Additional countries have shown interest in joining the work. http://www.nesubl.eu