We are pleased to make available these resources free for public use, provided on an "AS IS" basis without formal support or warranty of any kind.

We would appreciate any feedback you have, or suggestions for changes and improvements; please forward your comments to info@CraneSoftwrights.com.

A summary of all resources is available in date order for quick reference, in addition to an  RSS XML  file.

1. What is OASIS?

The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) is a standards-developing membership organization. Technical committees conceive, develop and publish specifications typically related to the deployment and use of technology for a community of users. Membership puts obligations on committee member contributors such that all OASIS work products are freely available to everyone to use without royalty or licensing fees.

1.1. What is the OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL)?

The OASIS UBL 1.0 and UBL 2.0 specifications define a generic XML interchange format for business documents.   UBL is designed to provide a universally understood and recognized commercial syntax for legally binding business documents and to operate within a standard business framework such as ISO 15000 (ebXML) to provide a complete, standards-based infrastructure that can extend the benefits of existing EDI systems to businesses of all sizes.

The UBL XML vocabulary is defined and maintained by the UBL Technical Committee.

1.2. What is the OASIS genericode code list vocabulary?

The Code List Representation Technical Committee defines and maintains the XML vocabulary named "genericode" used to represent a list of coded values in a standardized form that can be processed by XML-based tools.

1.3. More information on UBL and genericode

Crane Softwrights Ltd. has published the book Practical Universal Business Language Deployment with more details describing these OASIS resources and in the future with supplemental resources that build on the free resources found here. Follow the link behind the title above to download a free excerpt of the book, or to purchase a copy and receive all future editions of the title at no additional charge.

2. OASIS UBL resources

2.1. UBL stylesheets for printing PDF and displaying HTML

A separate directory has Crane's Universal Business Language (UBL) and UN Layout Key stylesheet libraries, used to print UBL to PDF according to the United Nations Layout Key.

Also included is the display of UBL to the screen without XML angle brackets.

The UN Layout Key portions are adaptable to any document model.

2.2. UBL report resources

As part of Crane's product development, some proprietary tools not made publicly available are used in the creation of various reports of use to Crane and its customers. Periodically we apply these tools to publicly-available resources and make reports and other results available here.

2.2.1. Crane's UBL 2.0 International Data Dictionary genericode files

This resource is a conversion of UBL 2.0 International Data Dictionary (IDD) spreadsheet files of various languages into OASIS genericode files. Each spreadsheet of each language's localization is converted to a genericode file. In addition, all of the languages are aggregated into a single genericode file for the localization information of each UBL 2.0 document model. User interfaces for programs and other multilingual applications may find it helpful to have some or all of the UBL IDD localization information in a generic keyed-table XML vocabulary.

2.2.2. Crane's UBL 2.0 model summary reports

These are sets of 32 HTML files (compressed to around 3Mb each) summarizing all of the information items and document model spreadsheets for UBL 2.0, both in the aggregate and for each of the 31 document models. The aggregate report has the complete common library, while each individual document report has only those components of the common library that are directly or indirectly referenced by the given document model

Each report is extensively hyperlinked and is a useful reference for jumping around the document models, particularly when deciding what is in or not in a customization. The tool used for creating this report will be available as an adjunct to the second and subsequent editions of Practical Universal Business Language Deployment that is currently being updated. Customers of the book can use the adjunct tool for the generation and publishing of their own reports for their own customizations.

Each report is an amalgam of the spreadsheet content and the International Data Dictionary (using the genericode files from Crane)

2.2.2.1. Crane's UBL 2.0 model summary reports in English

This is a summary in English of all of the information items and document model spreadsheets for UBL 2.0, using the English IDD genericode file for the definition and alternative business terms fields. The aggregate file is named CraneUBL2Report-EN.html.

2.2.2.2. Crane's UBL 2.0 model summary reports in Spanish

This is a summary in Spanish of all of the information items and document model spreadsheets for UBL 2.0, using the Spanish IDD genericode file for the definition and alternative business terms fields. The aggregate file is named CraneUBL2Report-ES.html.

2.2.2.3. Crane's UBL 2.0 model summary reports in Italian

This is a summary in Italian of all of the information items and document model spreadsheets for UBL 2.0, using the Italian IDD genericode file for the definition and alternative business terms fields. The aggregate file is named CraneUBL2Report-IT.html.

2.2.2.4. Crane's UBL 2.0 model summary reports in Japanese

This is a summary in Japanese of all of the information items and document model spreadsheets for UBL 2.0, using the Japanese IDD genericode file for the definition and alternative business terms fields. The aggregate file is named CraneUBL2Report-JP.html.

2.3. UBL 2 instance filters

This is a collection of XSLT and Python filters used to create a pure UBL instance by copying all elements defined by a UBL 2 specification and pruning those not defined by the specification by ignoring them. There is an aggregate filter supporting all document types simultaneously as well as one filter for each document type. As minor revisions of UBL are published by the UBL Technical Committee, Crane's library of filters will be updated to support each one.

As depicted in the filter documentation, such filtering is important to a UBL deployment that needs to be forward compatible in a heterogeneous network where instances of different minor revisions are being used. The validation of a filtered instance reflects any constraint violations to the minor version supported, not to any subsequent minor versions that are guaranteed to violate the earlier minor version constraints. Thus, an application will not be prevented from inspecting the filtered instance to determine the original minor version level and know that some indeterminate information items have been removed by filtering.

2.4. UBL XPath file resources

During the development of UBL 1.0, the Forms Presentation Subcommittee (FPSC, now renamed the Human Interface Subcommittee, or HISC) innovated the concept of an "XPath file" for the UBL document models. The document model for an XPath file is found in the HISC document repository.

The UBL 1.0 XPath files can be found through http://www.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl/200408/msg00077.html.

The UBL 2.0 XPath files can be found through http://www.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl/200610/msg00031.html (note that the standard files are unchanged from the committee draft files because there were no changes to the committee draft schemas when the standard was published).

2.4.1. XPath reporting

Crane's XPath reporting application written in Python (named "xpath2report") is used to produce up to four different reports from an XPath file.

2.4.2. XPath for XML instances

While XPath files were conceived for use only with XML document models, Crane's XPath for XML instances stylesheets (named "Crane-xml2xpath") are used to produce XPath reports directly from an XML instance.

2.5. Simplified UBL schema customization

Crane's schema customization environment is used to specify and produce multiple customizations of schemas for UBL document types used in different customization profiles. This approach prunes the UBL standardized W3C Schema expressions by commenting out unneeded constructs as specified in a customization. The resulting schemas can be used to validate instances of a customization. Also included are hand-crafted demonstrative extension schema fragments to illustrate how these can supplement the customization subset with additional constructs not defined by standard UBL.

3. OASIS Genericode and OASIS Context/Value Association file resources

Note that these stylesheets and validation methodology are used in the two hands-on training classes "Practical Code List Implementation" and "Practical Universal Business Language Deployment" offered by Crane Softwrights Ltd.

3.1. Genericode and context/value association file stylesheets

Crane's genericode and context/value association file visualization stylesheets are used for reporting the information found inside of genericode files and inside the context/value association files defined in the OASIS Schematron-based Value Validation Using Genericode methodology. The stylesheets available in this package are named Crane-assoc2html.xsl and Crane-genericode2html.xsl.

3.2. Crane's Schematron implementation of OASIS context/value association files for validation

Crane has developed an XML document value validation implementation of OASIS context/value association files. This validation creates an ISO 19757-3 Schematron assertion schema corresponding to the associations and any referenced code list and value enumerations. The out-of-the-box implementation included is an XSLT implementation of ISO Schematron, though it can be used with any implementation of ISO Schematron. The out-of-the-box implementation included supports OASIS genericode representations of the enumerations, though it can be adapted to any representation of code lists and value enumerations.