OASIS Business Document Exchange (BDXR) TC

Dear Yuri Saito,
 
Please share my response below with the UNECE Secretariat, the UN/CEFACT Bureau, and with members of the UN/CEFACT Forum as you find relevant:
 
First of all, let me thank you for your comment to the public review of the Business Document Envelope (BDE) version 1.1 draft technical specification published by the OASIS Business Document
Exchange (BDXR) Technical Committee. On a personal level I am especially pleased to have received UN/CEFACT’s invitation to work on a joint project for a document envelope, which it will be my pleasure to present to the members of the BDXR TC at our forthcoming
meeting on Wednesday next week. I am confident that your proposal will be received well, and I find that we have nothing but common interests in the final work product.
 
The Business Document Envelope is (as the name implies) an electronic envelope specification designed to carry one or more payloads from a sending party to a receiving party. Whereas the
Business Document Envelope and the Standard Business Document Header might be similar in that they both carry information necessary to route a payload across a network, the Envelope is essentially different from the Header in a number of important aspects.
Some of the principal differences between BDE and SBDH are that the BDE is designed to carry in it more than one payload at a time, it can maintain its content confidential while being transported over a network, and it is entirely agnostic to content and
the technical characteristics of its payload. These are all features essential to the 4-cornered network architecture that we aim to develop in the BDXR TC, and that we were unable to find elsewhere. The BDE specification also contains a number of non-network
related innovations, such as the concept of a “timed envelope” that maintains its payload confidential until a predefined time and date (as is necessary in for example public tenders). After the public review of BDE 1.1 has ended, the TC will produce and publish
a comment resolution log, including our formal and detailed response to your comment. We will of course share this document with you, as well as keeping you informed of our progress on the way.
 
Over the years, the BDXR TC has always managed excellent relations with the UN/CEFACT. Several members of BDXR (myself included) have at one point or another been actively involved in the
now discontinued project within UN/CEFACT to revise the SBDH specification, and we’ve held joint meetings on the matter at the UN/CEFACT Forum venue in Austria in 2012. When the BDXR TC last year decided to undertake a project for creating a document envelope,
it was out of a necessity to have this component in a 4-cornered network architecture, where we found that other specifications did not fulfill our basic functional requirements, and that projects to develop such specification in other groups had either been
discontinued or in standby for several years. I very much welcome UN/CEFACT’s renewed interest in the project, and I would like to leverage this opportunity to propose that we coordinate a joint conference call with all interested UN/CEFACT and BDXR members
to review options for best moving forward. If you want to coordinate with UN/CEFACT members then I shall do the coordination with members of the BDXR TC. Alternatively, I can also do the coordination with both groups if you prefer.
 
Looking much forward to your response and to a constructive and fruitful collaboration.
 
Best regards,
 
Kenneth Bengtsson
Chair, OASIS BDXR TC
 
 
 

From:
<bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org> on behalf of Yuri Saito <Yuri.Saito@unece.org>
Date: Friday, May 20, 2016 at 5:09 AM
To: "bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org" <bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org>
Cc: "UNCEFACT-BUREAU-SPECIFIC@lists.unece.org" <UNCEFACT-BUREAU-SPECIFIC@lists.unece.org>
Subject: [bdxr-comment] UN/CEFACT Comment on the draft OASIS Business Document Envelope specification


 



Dear Colleagues,


Please find below a comment from UN/CEFACT for the public review:


The draft OASIS Business Document Envelope specification seems to cover the same functional application as the UN/CEFACT Standard Business Document Header Technical Specification, SDBH, published
in 2004. As the latter is used for UN/CEFACT payloads and also widely used by other organisations to carry non-UN/CEFACT contents, we would strongly advise OASIS to suggest their members to use SBDH instead. If the OASIS working group found additional requirements,
UN/CEFACT would be happy to host a project to develop a new version or to carry out the work as a joint project.


Best regards,


Yuri

 


Yuri Saito (Ms.)
Associate Economic Affairs Officer

Economic Cooperation and Trade Division

United Nations Economic Commission for Europe


E-mail: Yuri.Saito@unece.org

Telephone: +41 (0)22 917 32 68

Office S-440

Palais des Nations
8-14 avenue de la Paix
CH - 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland

Twitter
 
Facebook
 
YouTube   UNECE

FYI. A possibly interesting development here between the BDXR TC and UNECE. Kenneth's reply to Yuri and UNCEFACT is positive, explaining how the TC's work differs *and* proposing discussion of possible re-engagement.  Jamie, you'll likely know whether Kenneth is proposing something where we'll need to offer some guidance.  /chet ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Kenneth Bengtsson < kbengtsson@efact.pe > Date: Fri, May 20, 2016 at 5:37 PM Subject: [bdxr] Re: [bdxr-comment] UN/CEFACT Comment on the draft OASIS Business Document Envelope specification To: Yuri Saito < Yuri.Saito@unece.org >, " bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org " < bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org > Cc: " UNCEFACT-BUREAU-SPECIFIC@lists.unece.org " < UNCEFACT-BUREAU-SPECIFIC@lists.unece.org >, " bdxr@lists.oasis-open.org " < bdxr@lists.oasis-open.org > Dear Yuri Saito,   Please share my response below with the UNECE Secretariat, the UN/CEFACT Bureau, and with members of the UN/CEFACT Forum as you find relevant:   First of all, let me thank you for your comment to the public review of the Business Document Envelope (BDE) version 1.1 draft technical specification published by the OASIS Business Document Exchange (BDXR) Technical Committee. On a personal level I am especially pleased to have received UN/CEFACT’s invitation to work on a joint project for a document envelope, which it will be my pleasure to present to the members of the BDXR TC at our forthcoming meeting on Wednesday next week. I am confident that your proposal will be received well, and I find that we have nothing but common interests in the final work product.   The Business Document Envelope is (as the name implies) an electronic envelope specification designed to carry one or more payloads from a sending party to a receiving party. Whereas the Business Document Envelope and the Standard Business Document Header might be similar in that they both carry information necessary to route a payload across a network, the Envelope is essentially different from the Header in a number of important aspects. Some of the principal differences between BDE and SBDH are that the BDE is designed to carry in it more than one payload at a time, it can maintain its content confidential while being transported over a network, and it is entirely agnostic to content and the technical characteristics of its payload. These are all features essential to the 4-cornered network architecture that we aim to develop in the BDXR TC, and that we were unable to find elsewhere. The BDE specification also contains a number of non-network related innovations, such as the concept of a “timed envelope” that maintains its payload confidential until a predefined time and date (as is necessary in for example public tenders). After the public review of BDE 1.1 has ended, the TC will produce and publish a comment resolution log, including our formal and detailed response to your comment. We will of course share this document with you, as well as keeping you informed of our progress on the way.   Over the years, the BDXR TC has always managed excellent relations with the UN/CEFACT. Several members of BDXR (myself included) have at one point or another been actively involved in the now discontinued project within UN/CEFACT to revise the SBDH specification, and we’ve held joint meetings on the matter at the UN/CEFACT Forum venue in Austria in 2012. When the BDXR TC last year decided to undertake a project for creating a document envelope, it was out of a necessity to have this component in a 4-cornered network architecture, where we found that other specifications did not fulfill our basic functional requirements, and that projects to develop such specification in other groups had either been discontinued or in standby for several years. I very much welcome UN/CEFACT’s renewed interest in the project, and I would like to leverage this opportunity to propose that we coordinate a joint conference call with all interested UN/CEFACT and BDXR members to review options for best moving forward. If you want to coordinate with UN/CEFACT members then I shall do the coordination with members of the BDXR TC. Alternatively, I can also do the coordination with both groups if you prefer.   Looking much forward to your response and to a constructive and fruitful collaboration.   Best regards,   Kenneth Bengtsson Chair, OASIS BDXR TC       From: < bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org > on behalf of Yuri Saito < Yuri.Saito@unece.org > Date: Friday, May 20, 2016 at 5:09 AM To: " bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org " < bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org > Cc: " UNCEFACT-BUREAU-SPECIFIC@lists.unece.org " < UNCEFACT-BUREAU-SPECIFIC@lists.unece.org > Subject: [bdxr-comment] UN/CEFACT Comment on the draft OASIS Business Document Envelope specification   Dear Colleagues, Please find below a comment from UN/CEFACT for the public review: The draft OASIS Business Document Envelope specification seems to cover the same functional application as the UN/CEFACT Standard Business Document Header Technical Specification, SDBH, published in 2004. As the latter is used for UN/CEFACT payloads and also widely used by other organisations to carry non-UN/CEFACT contents, we would strongly advise OASIS to suggest their members to use SBDH instead. If the OASIS working group found additional requirements, UN/CEFACT would be happy to host a project to develop a new version or to carry out the work as a joint project. Best regards, Yuri   Yuri Saito (Ms.) Associate Economic Affairs Officer Economic Cooperation and Trade Division United Nations Economic Commission for Europe E-mail: Yuri.Saito@unece.org Telephone: +41 (0)22 917 32 68 Office S-440 Palais des Nations 8-14 avenue de la Paix CH - 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland Twitter   Facebook   YouTube   UNECE -- /chet  ---------------- Chet Ensign Director of Standards Development and TC Administration  OASIS: Advancing open standards for the information society http://www.oasis-open.org Primary: +1 973-996-2298 Mobile: +1 201-341-1393 

Traveling today and tomorrow. Ken reached out to us. Jamie's on top of this. Less contentious than other Cefact matters.  Sent from phone,please forgive brevity & typos On May 23, 2016, at 07:14, Chet Ensign < chet.ensign@oasis-open.org > wrote: FYI. A possibly interesting development here between the BDXR TC and UNECE. Kenneth's reply to Yuri and UNCEFACT is positive, explaining how the TC's work differs *and* proposing discussion of possible re-engagement.  Jamie, you'll likely know whether Kenneth is proposing something where we'll need to offer some guidance.  /chet ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Kenneth Bengtsson < kbengtsson@efact.pe > Date: Fri, May 20, 2016 at 5:37 PM Subject: [bdxr] Re: [bdxr-comment] UN/CEFACT Comment on the draft OASIS Business Document Envelope specification To: Yuri Saito < Yuri.Saito@unece.org >, bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org < bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org > Cc: UNCEFACT-BUREAU-SPECIFIC@lists.unece.org < UNCEFACT-BUREAU-SPECIFIC@lists.unece.org >, bdxr@lists.oasis-open.org < bdxr@lists.oasis-open.org > Dear Yuri Saito,   Please share my response below with the UNECE Secretariat, the UN/CEFACT Bureau, and with members of the UN/CEFACT Forum as you find relevant:   First of all, let me thank you for your comment to the public review of the Business Document Envelope (BDE) version 1.1 draft technical specification published by the OASIS Business Document Exchange (BDXR) Technical Committee. On a personal level I am especially pleased to have received UN/CEFACT’s invitation to work on a joint project for a document envelope, which it will be my pleasure to present to the members of the BDXR TC at our forthcoming meeting on Wednesday next week. I am confident that your proposal will be received well, and I find that we have nothing but common interests in the final work product.   The Business Document Envelope is (as the name implies) an electronic envelope specification designed to carry one or more payloads from a sending party to a receiving party. Whereas the Business Document Envelope and the Standard Business Document Header might be similar in that they both carry information necessary to route a payload across a network, the Envelope is essentially different from the Header in a number of important aspects. Some of the principal differences between BDE and SBDH are that the BDE is designed to carry in it more than one payload at a time, it can maintain its content confidential while being transported over a network, and it is entirely agnostic to content and the technical characteristics of its payload. These are all features essential to the 4-cornered network architecture that we aim to develop in the BDXR TC, and that we were unable to find elsewhere. The BDE specification also contains a number of non-network related innovations, such as the concept of a “timed envelope” that maintains its payload confidential until a predefined time and date (as is necessary in for example public tenders). After the public review of BDE 1.1 has ended, the TC will produce and publish a comment resolution log, including our formal and detailed response to your comment. We will of course share this document with you, as well as keeping you informed of our progress on the way.   Over the years, the BDXR TC has always managed excellent relations with the UN/CEFACT. Several members of BDXR (myself included) have at one point or another been actively involved in the now discontinued project within UN/CEFACT to revise the SBDH specification, and we’ve held joint meetings on the matter at the UN/CEFACT Forum venue in Austria in 2012. When the BDXR TC last year decided to undertake a project for creating a document envelope, it was out of a necessity to have this component in a 4-cornered network architecture, where we found that other specifications did not fulfill our basic functional requirements, and that projects to develop such specification in other groups had either been discontinued or in standby for several years. I very much welcome UN/CEFACT’s renewed interest in the project, and I would like to leverage this opportunity to propose that we coordinate a joint conference call with all interested UN/CEFACT and BDXR members to review options for best moving forward. If you want to coordinate with UN/CEFACT members then I shall do the coordination with members of the BDXR TC. Alternatively, I can also do the coordination with both groups if you prefer.   Looking much forward to your response and to a constructive and fruitful collaboration.   Best regards,   Kenneth Bengtsson Chair, OASIS BDXR TC       From: < bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org > on behalf of Yuri Saito < Yuri.Saito@unece.org > Date: Friday, May 20, 2016 at 5:09 AM To: bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org < bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org > Cc: UNCEFACT-BUREAU-SPECIFIC@lists.unece.org < UNCEFACT-BUREAU-SPECIFIC@lists.unece.org > Subject: [bdxr-comment] UN/CEFACT Comment on the draft OASIS Business Document Envelope specification   Dear Colleagues, Please find below a comment from UN/CEFACT for the public review: The draft OASIS Business Document Envelope specification seems to cover the same functional application as the UN/CEFACT Standard Business Document Header Technical Specification, SDBH, published in 2004. As the latter is used for UN/CEFACT payloads and also widely used by other organisations to carry non-UN/CEFACT contents, we would strongly advise OASIS to suggest their members to use SBDH instead. If the OASIS working group found additional requirements, UN/CEFACT would be happy to host a project to develop a new version or to carry out the work as a joint project. Best regards, Yuri  <image001.gif> Yuri Saito (Ms.) Associate Economic Affairs Officer Economic Cooperation and Trade Division United Nations Economic Commission for Europe E-mail: Yuri.Saito@unece.org Telephone: +41 (0)22 917 32 68 Office S-440 Palais des Nations 8-14 avenue de la Paix CH - 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland <image002.gif> Twitter   <image003.gif> Facebook   <image004.gif> YouTube   <image005.gif> UNECE -- /chet  ---------------- Chet Ensign Director of Standards Development and TC Administration  OASIS: Advancing open standards for the information society http://www.oasis-open.org Primary: +1 973-996-2298 Mobile: +1 201-341-1393 

Two comments from my side,  personal opinion only: 1)   There was a group maintaining the SBDH (which originates in GS1 and was later submitted to CEFACT) in CEFACT which, as Kenneth's response indicates, was working on enhancements.  I wasn't involved in it and there are no public archives so I don't know why it apparently did not progress there.  In general it is understandable that CEFACT asks why this work could not have been done in CEFACT.  But OASIS also has had at least one TCs (Materials) that died because of lack of participation, only to see the topic come back to life at another organization (CEN), so it happens to all of us. 2) Regarding the justification for this new specification:  I've never been convinced of the need for this specification.  There are far too many file container  standards in the world already, and this one is no improvement over earlier ones.   The multiple payload requirements stated in Kenneth's response  can be handled using the existing CEFACT SBDH (and its Manifest feature) in combination with an established multi-part container format like MIME.  BDE has no compression feature and is XML based, so all binary content needs to be Base64 encoded and any tool to process BDE containers it will have to load the (potentially huge amount of) data in an XML tree, so it is a very inefficient format. It is true that with XML tools it is easy to assemble/disassemble data,  but any develop can create a MIME or ZIP package in as few or less lines of code as an XML container, so I don't see the ease-of-use advantage. The requirement to only allow decryption after a specified time could (imho) be better handled using established so called threshold cryptography schemes . Another option is to not package and use (for exchange) a communication protocol that supports sending multiple payloads.  Email does.  And AS2/ebMS2/ebMS3/AS4 can.  Kind Regards, Pim   On 23-05-16 17:41, Laurent Liscia wrote: Traveling today and tomorrow. Ken reached out to us. Jamie's on top of this. Less contentious than other Cefact matters.  Sent from phone,please forgive brevity & typos On May 23, 2016, at 07:14, Chet Ensign < chet.ensign@oasis-open.org > wrote: FYI. A possibly interesting development here between the BDXR TC and UNECE. Kenneth's reply to Yuri and UNCEFACT is positive, explaining how the TC's work differs *and* proposing discussion of possible re-engagement.  Jamie, you'll likely know whether Kenneth is proposing something where we'll need to offer some guidance.  /chet ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Kenneth Bengtsson < kbengtsson@efact.pe > Date: Fri, May 20, 2016 at 5:37 PM Subject: [bdxr] Re: [bdxr-comment] UN/CEFACT Comment on the draft OASIS Business Document Envelope specification To: Yuri Saito < Yuri.Saito@unece.org >, bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org < bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org > Cc: UNCEFACT-BUREAU-SPECIFIC@lists.unece.org < UNCEFACT-BUREAU-SPECIFIC@lists.unece.org >, bdxr@lists.oasis-open.org < bdxr@lists.oasis-open.org > Dear Yuri Saito,   Please share my response below with the UNECE Secretariat, the UN/CEFACT Bureau, and with members of the UN/CEFACT Forum as you find relevant:   First of all, let me thank you for your comment to the public review of the Business Document Envelope (BDE) version 1.1 draft technical specification published by the OASIS Business Document Exchange (BDXR) Technical Committee. On a personal level I am especially pleased to have received UN/CEFACT’s invitation to work on a joint project for a document envelope, which it will be my pleasure to present to the members of the BDXR TC at our forthcoming meeting on Wednesday next week. I am confident that your proposal will be received well, and I find that we have nothing but common interests in the final work product.   The Business Document Envelope is (as the name implies) an electronic envelope specification designed to carry one or more payloads from a sending party to a receiving party. Whereas the Business Document Envelope and the Standard Business Document Header might be similar in that they both carry information necessary to route a payload across a network, the Envelope is essentially different from the Header in a number of important aspects. Some of the principal differences between BDE and SBDH are that the BDE is designed to carry in it more than one payload at a time, it can maintain its content confidential while being transported over a network, and it is entirely agnostic to content and the technical characteristics of its payload. These are all features essential to the 4-cornered network architecture that we aim to develop in the BDXR TC, and that we were unable to find elsewhere. The BDE specification also contains a number of non-network related innovations, such as the concept of a “timed envelope” that maintains its payload confidential until a predefined time and date (as is necessary in for example public tenders). After the public review of BDE 1.1 has ended, the TC will produce and publish a comment resolution log, including our formal and detailed response to your comment. We will of course share this document with you, as well as keeping you informed of our progress on the way.   Over the years, the BDXR TC has always managed excellent relations with the UN/CEFACT. Several members of BDXR (myself included) have at one point or another been actively involved in the now discontinued project within UN/CEFACT to revise the SBDH specification, and we’ve held joint meetings on the matter at the UN/CEFACT Forum venue in Austria in 2012. When the BDXR TC last year decided to undertake a project for creating a document envelope, it was out of a necessity to have this component in a 4-cornered network architecture, where we found that other specifications did not fulfill our basic functional requirements, and that projects to develop such specification in other groups had either been discontinued or in standby for several years. I very much welcome UN/CEFACT’s renewed interest in the project, and I would like to leverage this opportunity to propose that we coordinate a joint conference call with all interested UN/CEFACT and BDXR members to review options for best moving forward. If you want to coordinate with UN/CEFACT members then I shall do the coordination with members of the BDXR TC. Alternatively, I can also do the coordination with both groups if you prefer.   Looking much forward to your response and to a constructive and fruitful collaboration.   Best regards,   Kenneth Bengtsson Chair, OASIS BDXR TC       From: < bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org > on behalf of Yuri Saito < Yuri.Saito@unece.org > Date: Friday, May 20, 2016 at 5:09 AM To: bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org < bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org > Cc: UNCEFACT-BUREAU-SPECIFIC@lists.unece.org < UNCEFACT-BUREAU-SPECIFIC@lists.unece.org > Subject: [bdxr-comment] UN/CEFACT Comment on the draft OASIS Business Document Envelope specification   Dear Colleagues, Please find below a comment from UN/CEFACT for the public review: The draft OASIS Business Document Envelope specification seems to cover the same functional application as the UN/CEFACT Standard Business Document Header Technical Specification, SDBH, published in 2004. As the latter is used for UN/CEFACT payloads and also widely used by other organisations to carry non-UN/CEFACT contents, we would strongly advise OASIS to suggest their members to use SBDH instead. If the OASIS working group found additional requirements, UN/CEFACT would be happy to host a project to develop a new version or to carry out the work as a joint project. Best regards, Yuri  <image001.gif> Yuri Saito (Ms.) Associate Economic Affairs Officer Economic Cooperation and Trade Division United Nations Economic Commission for Europe E-mail: Yuri.Saito@unece.org Telephone: +41 (0)22 917 32 68 Office S-440 Palais des Nations 8-14 avenue de la Paix CH - 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland <image002.gif> Twitter   <image003.gif> Facebook   <image004.gif> YouTube   <image005.gif> UNECE -- /chet  ---------------- Chet Ensign Director of Standards Development and TC Administration  OASIS: Advancing open standards for the information society http://www.oasis-open.org Primary: +1 973-996-2298 Mobile: +1 201-341-1393 

Thanks for the honest assessment, much appreciated. On 5/24/2016 12:20 AM, Pim van der Eijk (OASIS) wrote: Two comments from my side,  personal opinion only: 1)   There was a group maintaining the SBDH (which originates in GS1 and was later submitted to CEFACT) in CEFACT which, as Kenneth's response indicates, was working on enhancements.  I wasn't involved in it and there are no public archives so I don't know why it apparently did not progress there.  In general it is understandable that CEFACT asks why this work could not have been done in CEFACT.  But OASIS also has had at least one TCs (Materials) that died because of lack of participation, only to see the topic come back to life at another organization (CEN), so it happens to all of us. 2) Regarding the justification for this new specification:  I've never been convinced of the need for this specification.  There are far too many file container  standards in the world already, and this one is no improvement over earlier ones.   The multiple payload requirements stated in Kenneth's response  can be handled using the existing CEFACT SBDH (and its Manifest feature) in combination with an established multi-part container format like MIME.  BDE has no compression feature and is XML based, so all binary content needs to be Base64 encoded and any tool to process BDE containers it will have to load the (potentially huge amount of) data in an XML tree, so it is a very inefficient format. It is true that with XML tools it is easy to assemble/disassemble data,  but any develop can create a MIME or ZIP package in as few or less lines of code as an XML container, so I don't see the ease-of-use advantage. The requirement to only allow decryption after a specified time could (imho) be better handled using established so called threshold cryptography schemes . Another option is to not package and use (for exchange) a communication protocol that supports sending multiple payloads.  Email does.  And AS2/ebMS2/ebMS3/AS4 can.  Kind Regards, Pim   On 23-05-16 17:41, Laurent Liscia wrote: Traveling today and tomorrow. Ken reached out to us. Jamie's on top of this. Less contentious than other Cefact matters.  Sent from phone,please forgive brevity & typos On May 23, 2016, at 07:14, Chet Ensign < chet.ensign@oasis-open.org > wrote: FYI. A possibly interesting development here between the BDXR TC and UNECE. Kenneth's reply to Yuri and UNCEFACT is positive, explaining how the TC's work differs *and* proposing discussion of possible re-engagement.  Jamie, you'll likely know whether Kenneth is proposing something where we'll need to offer some guidance.  /chet ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Kenneth Bengtsson < kbengtsson@efact.pe > Date: Fri, May 20, 2016 at 5:37 PM Subject: [bdxr] Re: [bdxr-comment] UN/CEFACT Comment on the draft OASIS Business Document Envelope specification To: Yuri Saito < Yuri.Saito@unece.org >, bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org < bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org > Cc: UNCEFACT-BUREAU-SPECIFIC@lists.unece.org < UNCEFACT-BUREAU-SPECIFIC@lists.unece.org >, bdxr@lists.oasis-open.org < bdxr@lists.oasis-open.org > Dear Yuri Saito,   Please share my response below with the UNECE Secretariat, the UN/CEFACT Bureau, and with members of the UN/CEFACT Forum as you find relevant:   First of all, let me thank you for your comment to the public review of the Business Document Envelope (BDE) version 1.1 draft technical specification published by the OASIS Business Document Exchange (BDXR) Technical Committee. On a personal level I am especially pleased to have received UN/CEFACT’s invitation to work on a joint project for a document envelope, which it will be my pleasure to present to the members of the BDXR TC at our forthcoming meeting on Wednesday next week. I am confident that your proposal will be received well, and I find that we have nothing but common interests in the final work product.   The Business Document Envelope is (as the name implies) an electronic envelope specification designed to carry one or more payloads from a sending party to a receiving party. Whereas the Business Document Envelope and the Standard Business Document Header might be similar in that they both carry information necessary to route a payload across a network, the Envelope is essentially different from the Header in a number of important aspects. Some of the principal differences between BDE and SBDH are that the BDE is designed to carry in it more than one payload at a time, it can maintain its content confidential while being transported over a network, and it is entirely agnostic to content and the technical characteristics of its payload. These are all features essential to the 4-cornered network architecture that we aim to develop in the BDXR TC, and that we were unable to find elsewhere. The BDE specification also contains a number of non-network related innovations, such as the concept of a “timed envelope” that maintains its payload confidential until a predefined time and date (as is necessary in for example public tenders). After the public review of BDE 1.1 has ended, the TC will produce and publish a comment resolution log, including our formal and detailed response to your comment. We will of course share this document with you, as well as keeping you informed of our progress on the way.   Over the years, the BDXR TC has always managed excellent relations with the UN/CEFACT. Several members of BDXR (myself included) have at one point or another been actively involved in the now discontinued project within UN/CEFACT to revise the SBDH specification, and we’ve held joint meetings on the matter at the UN/CEFACT Forum venue in Austria in 2012. When the BDXR TC last year decided to undertake a project for creating a document envelope, it was out of a necessity to have this component in a 4-cornered network architecture, where we found that other specifications did not fulfill our basic functional requirements, and that projects to develop such specification in other groups had either been discontinued or in standby for several years. I very much welcome UN/CEFACT’s renewed interest in the project, and I would like to leverage this opportunity to propose that we coordinate a joint conference call with all interested UN/CEFACT and BDXR members to review options for best moving forward. If you want to coordinate with UN/CEFACT members then I shall do the coordination with members of the BDXR TC. Alternatively, I can also do the coordination with both groups if you prefer.   Looking much forward to your response and to a constructive and fruitful collaboration.   Best regards,   Kenneth Bengtsson Chair, OASIS BDXR TC       From: < bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org > on behalf of Yuri Saito < Yuri.Saito@unece.org > Date: Friday, May 20, 2016 at 5:09 AM To: bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org < bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org > Cc: UNCEFACT-BUREAU-SPECIFIC@lists.unece.org < UNCEFACT-BUREAU-SPECIFIC@lists.unece.org > Subject: [bdxr-comment] UN/CEFACT Comment on the draft OASIS Business Document Envelope specification   Dear Colleagues, Please find below a comment from UN/CEFACT for the public review: The draft OASIS Business Document Envelope specification seems to cover the same functional application as the UN/CEFACT Standard Business Document Header Technical Specification, SDBH, published in 2004. As the latter is used for UN/CEFACT payloads and also widely used by other organisations to carry non-UN/CEFACT contents, we would strongly advise OASIS to suggest their members to use SBDH instead. If the OASIS working group found additional requirements, UN/CEFACT would be happy to host a project to develop a new version or to carry out the work as a joint project. Best regards, Yuri  <image001.gif> Yuri Saito (Ms.) Associate Economic Affairs Officer Economic Cooperation and Trade Division United Nations Economic Commission for Europe E-mail: Yuri.Saito@unece.org Telephone: +41 (0)22 917 32 68 Office S-440 Palais des Nations 8-14 avenue de la Paix CH - 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland <image002.gif> Twitter   <image003.gif> Facebook   <image004.gif> YouTube   <image005.gif> UNECE -- /chet  ---------------- Chet Ensign Director of Standards Development and TC Administration  OASIS: Advancing open standards for the information society http://www.oasis-open.org Primary: +1 973-996-2298 Mobile: +1 201-341-1393  -- Laurent Liscia, CEO OASIS: Advancing open standards for the information society (510) 669-1261 Follow OASIS on: LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/OASISopen Twitter: http://twitter.com/OASISopen Facebook: http://facebook.com/oasis.open Take a tour of OASIS at: http://www.oasis-open.org/home/tour.php

I will formulate some kind of reply to this today, so that we're responding to Ken, but (just to confirm) my impression from our internal chat is that this is not A matter of great concern or gravity. Regards, Jamie Sent from my mobile On May 25, 2016, at 9:27 AM, Laurent M Liscia < laurent.liscia@oasis-open.org > wrote: Thanks for the honest assessment, much appreciated. On 5/24/2016 12:20 AM, Pim van der Eijk (OASIS) wrote: Two comments from my side,  personal opinion only: 1)   There was a group maintaining the SBDH (which originates in GS1 and was later submitted to CEFACT) in CEFACT which, as Kenneth's response indicates, was working on enhancements.  I wasn't involved in it and there are no public archives so I don't know why it apparently did not progress there.  In general it is understandable that CEFACT asks why this work could not have been done in CEFACT.  But OASIS also has had at least one TCs (Materials) that died because of lack of participation, only to see the topic come back to life at another organization (CEN), so it happens to all of us. 2) Regarding the justification for this new specification:  I've never been convinced of the need for this specification.  There are far too many file container  standards in the world already, and this one is no improvement over earlier ones.   The multiple payload requirements stated in Kenneth's response  can be handled using the existing CEFACT SBDH (and its Manifest feature) in combination with an established multi-part container format like MIME.  BDE has no compression feature and is XML based, so all binary content needs to be Base64 encoded and any tool to process BDE containers it will have to load the (potentially huge amount of) data in an XML tree, so it is a very inefficient format. It is true that with XML tools it is easy to assemble/disassemble data,  but any develop can create a MIME or ZIP package in as few or less lines of code as an XML container, so I don't see the ease-of-use advantage. The requirement to only allow decryption after a specified time could (imho) be better handled using established so called threshold cryptography schemes . Another option is to not package and use (for exchange) a communication protocol that supports sending multiple payloads.  Email does.  And AS2/ebMS2/ebMS3/AS4 can.  Kind Regards, Pim   On 23-05-16 17:41, Laurent Liscia wrote: Traveling today and tomorrow. Ken reached out to us. Jamie's on top of this. Less contentious than other Cefact matters.  Sent from phone,please forgive brevity & typos On May 23, 2016, at 07:14, Chet Ensign < chet.ensign@oasis-open.org > wrote: FYI. A possibly interesting development here between the BDXR TC and UNECE. Kenneth's reply to Yuri and UNCEFACT is positive, explaining how the TC's work differs *and* proposing discussion of possible re-engagement.  Jamie, you'll likely know whether Kenneth is proposing something where we'll need to offer some guidance.  /chet ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Kenneth Bengtsson < kbengtsson@efact.pe > Date: Fri, May 20, 2016 at 5:37 PM Subject: [bdxr] Re: [bdxr-comment] UN/CEFACT Comment on the draft OASIS Business Document Envelope specification To: Yuri Saito < Yuri.Saito@unece.org >, bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org < bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org > Cc: UNCEFACT-BUREAU-SPECIFIC@lists.unece.org < UNCEFACT-BUREAU-SPECIFIC@lists.unece.org >, bdxr@lists.oasis-open.org < bdxr@lists.oasis-open.org > Dear Yuri Saito,   Please share my response below with the UNECE Secretariat, the UN/CEFACT Bureau, and with members of the UN/CEFACT Forum as you find relevant:   First of all, let me thank you for your comment to the public review of the Business Document Envelope (BDE) version 1.1 draft technical specification published by the OASIS Business Document Exchange (BDXR) Technical Committee. On a personal level I am especially pleased to have received UN/CEFACT’s invitation to work on a joint project for a document envelope, which it will be my pleasure to present to the members of the BDXR TC at our forthcoming meeting on Wednesday next week. I am confident that your proposal will be received well, and I find that we have nothing but common interests in the final work product.   The Business Document Envelope is (as the name implies) an electronic envelope specification designed to carry one or more payloads from a sending party to a receiving party. Whereas the Business Document Envelope and the Standard Business Document Header might be similar in that they both carry information necessary to route a payload across a network, the Envelope is essentially different from the Header in a number of important aspects. Some of the principal differences between BDE and SBDH are that the BDE is designed to carry in it more than one payload at a time, it can maintain its content confidential while being transported over a network, and it is entirely agnostic to content and the technical characteristics of its payload. These are all features essential to the 4-cornered network architecture that we aim to develop in the BDXR TC, and that we were unable to find elsewhere. The BDE specification also contains a number of non-network related innovations, such as the concept of a “timed envelope” that maintains its payload confidential until a predefined time and date (as is necessary in for example public tenders). After the public review of BDE 1.1 has ended, the TC will produce and publish a comment resolution log, including our formal and detailed response to your comment. We will of course share this document with you, as well as keeping you informed of our progress on the way.   Over the years, the BDXR TC has always managed excellent relations with the UN/CEFACT. Several members of BDXR (myself included) have at one point or another been actively involved in the now discontinued project within UN/CEFACT to revise the SBDH specification, and we’ve held joint meetings on the matter at the UN/CEFACT Forum venue in Austria in 2012. When the BDXR TC last year decided to undertake a project for creating a document envelope, it was out of a necessity to have this component in a 4-cornered network architecture, where we found that other specifications did not fulfill our basic functional requirements, and that projects to develop such specification in other groups had either been discontinued or in standby for several years. I very much welcome UN/CEFACT’s renewed interest in the project, and I would like to leverage this opportunity to propose that we coordinate a joint conference call with all interested UN/CEFACT and BDXR members to review options for best moving forward. If you want to coordinate with UN/CEFACT members then I shall do the coordination with members of the BDXR TC. Alternatively, I can also do the coordination with both groups if you prefer.   Looking much forward to your response and to a constructive and fruitful collaboration.   Best regards,   Kenneth Bengtsson Chair, OASIS BDXR TC       From: < bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org > on behalf of Yuri Saito < Yuri.Saito@unece.org > Date: Friday, May 20, 2016 at 5:09 AM To: bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org < bdxr-comment@lists.oasis-open.org > Cc: UNCEFACT-BUREAU-SPECIFIC@lists.unece.org < UNCEFACT-BUREAU-SPECIFIC@lists.unece.org > Subject: [bdxr-comment] UN/CEFACT Comment on the draft OASIS Business Document Envelope specification   Dear Colleagues, Please find below a comment from UN/CEFACT for the public review: The draft OASIS Business Document Envelope specification seems to cover the same functional application as the UN/CEFACT Standard Business Document Header Technical Specification, SDBH, published in 2004. As the latter is used for UN/CEFACT payloads and also widely used by other organisations to carry non-UN/CEFACT contents, we would strongly advise OASIS to suggest their members to use SBDH instead. If the OASIS working group found additional requirements, UN/CEFACT would be happy to host a project to develop a new version or to carry out the work as a joint project. Best regards, Yuri  <image001.gif> Yuri Saito (Ms.) Associate Economic Affairs Officer Economic Cooperation and Trade Division United Nations Economic Commission for Europe E-mail: Yuri.Saito@unece.org Telephone: +41 (0)22 917 32 68 Office S-440 Palais des Nations 8-14 avenue de la Paix CH - 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland <image002.gif> Twitter   <image003.gif> Facebook   <image004.gif> YouTube   <image005.gif> UNECE -- /chet  ---------------- Chet Ensign Director of Standards Development and TC Administration  OASIS: Advancing open standards for the information society http://www.oasis-open.org Primary: +1 973-996-2298 Mobile: +1 201-341-1393  -- Laurent Liscia, CEO OASIS: Advancing open standards for the information society (510) 669-1261 Follow OASIS on: LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/OASISopen Twitter: http://twitter.com/OASISopen Facebook: http://facebook.com/oasis.open Take a tour of OASIS at: http://www.oasis-open.org/home/tour.php