The United Nations ebXML Core Components Technical Specification has reached a very important milestone - Step 6 of the UN's Open Development Process. This step - Implementation verification - is the equivalent of W3C Candidate status. The core components specification is part of the larger ebXML framework. Specifically, the Core Components specification provides the basis for the ebXML payload by providing a new approach to creating reusable, semantically neutral, information building blocks. To quote from the specification -

This Core Components Technical Specification provides a way to identify, capture and maximise the re-use of business information to support and enhance information interoperability across multiple business situations. The specification focuses both on human-readable and machine-processable representations of this information.

The OASIS UBL, OAG, EAN-UCC, SWIFT, UN/CEFACT, ANSI ASC X12 and a host of other standards organizations are already using this new approach as the basis for building interoperable XML business standards.

This presentation will present an overview of the United Nations ebXML Core Components Technical Specification and will explain how the OASIS UBL (Universal Business Library) TC has built a foundation set of XML procurement schemas upon this specification. In addition, this presentation will explain how such an approach provides the data interoperability benefits which are pre-requisites for successful XML B2B adoption.