XML Business Document Library Project Team

[Klaus-Dieter Naujok <knaujok@home.com>]

Dear eBTWG members,

The eBTWG Executives are happy to announce that the XML Business
Document Library (XBDL) Project has been approved.

The eBTWG Executive does understand that the XBDL Project is in 
concept identical to the recently approved work of the OASIS UBL 
TC. After consultation with the CSG we agreed to proceed with the 
approval of our project. The reason is very simple, this work is 
not related to ebXML infrastructure work, but related to ebXML 
content and context work which is the agreed responsibility of 
UN/CEFACT. We are responding to our business user community in 
providing a migration path for established legacy EDI semantics and 
associated business process artifact dictionaries containing codes, 
elements and message semantics to a Standard Library of XML 
business grammatical components.

UN/CEFACT strongly supports the need for this standard library and
believes that UN/CEFACT is the correct forum for this work to 
progress. The approved XBDL Project has been part of the UN/CEFACT 
work plan as it relates to the approved UN/CEFACT eBusiness vision, 
it is not a totally new item.  CSG and eBTWG are aware that 
approving the XBDL Project results in two similar efforts. The dual 
efforts of UN/CEFACT and OASIS potentially complicate the  
development of a single standard library.  We believe that XBDL is 
directly related to the work plan of UN/CEFACT; however, we 
understand the value that the UBL participants could add to the 
XBDL Project. We strongly encourage the UBL members to join our
open, international effort to produce a true global dejure
specification.

eBTWG is now initiating the "Call for participation and 
contribution" in order to ensure that all parties interested in 
participation and/or contributing to the project can do so. The 
call will end 5 October 2001.

If you wish to join the project team please visit the eBTWG Web 
Site for the details of the team as outlined in the approved 
Project Proposals (available under the Project Team Menu - The page 
should be available by Monday next week). To sign-up fill out the 
registration form on that page. You will be subscribed to the 
Project Teams E-mail List immediately.

If you wish to make a contribution to the project, forward an 
electronic copy to me. To satisfy UN/CEFACT's goal of openness, 
everyone that makes a contribution must agree to remove any IPR 
constraints or restrictions that might be associated with their 
contribution.

The project team is scheduled to have its first meeting as part of 
the eBTWG meeting, 8-12 October 2001 in San Francisco, CA, USA.

Should you have any question feel free to contact me directly.

Regards,

Klaus

-- 
Klaus-Dieter Naujok             UN/CEFACT/eBTWG & TMWG Chair
IONA Technologies, Santa Clara, CA, Chief Scientific Officer