Gartner Weighs in on UBL

Hmm. The reason we have standards is so everyone has a common format towork with. But this is the wild and crazy Web services world, andthings are never that simple, even for the relatively straightforwardmission of the Unified Business Language (UBL) released by OASIS last week. (See original UBL post, below.) Gartner analysts have released a statement on the prospects for UBL,intended as a standardized format for exchanging EDI documents. Theirtake? Keep an eye on two similar approaches to XML messageconstruction. First, there's Business Object Documents (BODs) of the Open Application Group (OAGI)consortium, orginally launched by ERP software vendors. Then, there'sContext Inspired Component Architecture (CICA) for XML messages,promoted by the Accredited Standards Committee X12 group (the originalEDI group). Yes, it's a mouthful, but there's a good explanation of CICA in a recent issue of eCommerce Connexion.