Re: [ebxml-dev] Free UBL formatter now available

["Stephen Green" <stephen_green@bristol-city.gov.uk>]

This is looking like a good start towards something interoperable
with both small and large systems. It seems to me that it may be
feasible (further studies needed) that the UN Layout Keys might be 
suitable as a common factor to help interoperability between such 
systems. Could it then be the basis for a 'profile'. If so then I suggest
the gaps and a formalised mapping between UBL and UNLayout be
standardised early on (and perhaps compared in the process of this
with the 'ubl lite' work in my earlier mailings). 

Then I'd like to see that made a basis for a BPSS and a sample
template CPP along with guidelines on how these can be used
with ebMS (2 or 3) such that interoperability between small and
large systems is enabled in as standard a way as resources and
will allow.

This is how I hope things might progress. I reckon both UN Layout
mapping with UBL and the ubl lite subsets be considered aids towards
interoperable implementaions of UBL. Either approach might lead to
standarised subsets (or standardised transformations which could be 
treated as and formalised as subsets) but for now we don't know 
which will succeed or whether both will succeed in facilitating business
application interoperability.

All the best

Stephen Green



>>> <jon.bosak@sun.com> 04/11/04 21:01:42 >>>
Hello UBL users and developers,

You'll remember last month's announcement of free XSL-FO UBL
stylesheets from Crane Softwrights:

   http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl-dev/200410/msg00004.html 

The availability of the Crane stylesheets means that any UBL
instance document (purchase order, invoice, etc.) can be rendered
by an XSL-FO formatter as a PDF or HTML file conforming to the UN
Layout Key, which has served for over 40 years as the
international standard for printed trade documents.

In a stunning followup to the Crane release, Ambrosoft has
announced this week the availability of a free Java formatter that
implements the Crane UBL stylesheets as a single executable jar
file.  The Ambrosoft UBL transformer runs on any Java platform
(including Personal Java, available on some PDAs) and will
transform any UBL 1.0 document instance into either an FO file for
further processing by an FO-aware application or directly into
HTML that can be displayed or printed out using an ordinary web
browser.

The UBL transformer can be downloaded from the Ambrosoft site at

   http://www.ambrosoft.com/ 

According to the documentation included in the release, the UBL
transformer "is an illustration of how standard XSLT stylesheets
are converted into a fast and small Java executable JAR file,
suitable for high-speed or small-footprint applications from
servers to hand-held devices.  This JAR file was created with
Ambrosoft's Gregor/XSLT technology, implementing high performance
XSLT processing with an optimizing compiler and a fine-tuned
runtime system.  A descendant of XSLTC, Gregor/XSLT reflects a few
more years of innovation and experimentation in speeding up XSLT
processing and today is the fastest XSLT solution for Java."

Thanks to Crane and Ambrosoft, UBL can now claim to have fulfilled
its promise to provide a standard machine-processable business
data format from which at any moment you can automatically
generate an internationally standardized paper or online
representation usable in traditional paper and fax-based
workflows.  G. Ken Holman of Crane and Jacek Ambroziak of
Ambrosoft deserve the congratulations and appreciation of the
entire world business community for their critical contribution to
making the vision of low-cost electronic commerce a reality.

Jon Bosak, Sun Microsystems
Chair, OASIS UBL Technical Committee