An announcement from Diego Ballve of Digital Artefacts Europe describes the donation of an ebXML Core Components vocabulary management implementation to the open-source community through the freebXML initiative.

The freebXML CC project on SourceForge includes a set of tools developed to facilitate the work of domain experts managing data dictionaries. The the project is now available under LGPL terms for use by the open-source community, and will be further developed under the freebXML umbrella.

Core Components are defined in the UN/CEFACT Core Components Technical Specification as Part 8 of the ebXML Framework. The UN/CEFACT Plenary voted in May 2004 to submit the ebXML Core Components Technical Specification to ISO TC154 as Part 5 of ISO 15000 (Technical Specification). The specification is now in process for ISO fast track approval, and will join other parts of ISO/TS 15000 Electronic business eXtensible Markup Language (ebXML), including Collaboration-protocol profile and agreement specification (ebCPP), Message service specification (ebMS), Registry information model specification (ebRIM), and Registry services specification (ebRS).

The ebXML Core Components technical specification (CCTS) "presents a methodology for developing a common set of semantic building blocks that represent the general types of business data in use today and provides for the creation of new business vocabularies and restructuring of existing business vocabularies. It provides a way to identify, capture and maximize the re-use of business information to support and enhance information interoperability across multiple business situations."

Several organizations and standards bodies now base their data structures and information exchanges on the syntax-neutral Core Components model. The Universal Business Language (UBL) 1.0, approved as an OASIS Committee Draft and under ballot as an OASIS Standard, is an implementation of ebXML CCTS, supporting the concept of a common semantic library of business core components.

The freebXML CC implementation "is based on the ebXML Core Components specification and comprises a developer API as well as an end user GUI. Where the freebXML CC API gives the developer a chance to use Core Components without concern for the implementation itself, the freebXML CC GUI will allow domain experts with reasonable awareness of the Core Components specification to model their vocabularies and manage their data dictionaries using this methodology with minimum effort."

freebXML CC "uses the ebXML Registry to store vocabulary data. More specifically, it uses the freebXML Registry through the Java API for XML Registries (JAXR). Currently the freebXML CC API is in production use state, while the GUI is still a prototype. The API maps Core Component concepts to ebXML Registry Information Model concepts through JAXR API, abstracting details about the Registry itself and providing simplified query and life cycle management features focused on Core Components and Vocabularies."

The Java API for XML Registries (JAXR), included in the Java Web Services Developer Pack, "provides a uniform and standard Java API for accessing different kinds of XML Registries. An XML registry is an enabling infrastructure for building, deploying, and discovering Web services. Simplicity and ease of use are facilitated within JAXR by a unified JAXR information model, which describes content and metadata within XML registries. The JAXR specification includes detailed bindings between the JAXR information model and both the ebXML Registry and the UDDI Registry v2.0 specifications."

The freebXML CC vision is to "further develop the API into a 'Java API for Vocabulary Management', accompanied by a Vocabulary Management application. This will require generalizations and extensions of the current API and a set of Graphical User Interfaces. For the graphical interfaces, the current idea is to take advantage of the existing RegistryBrowser clients for the freebXML Registry: the thin client (a JSF based web GUI) and/or the thick client (a Java Swing application). This will require the freebXML registry to support a set of pluggable graphical interfaces, which shall be developed in collaboration with the freebXML CC project."

freebXML "is an initiative that aims to foster the development and adoption of ebXML and related technology through software and experience sharing. The mission of freebXML.org is to provide a centralized site for developers to access and share 'free' ebXML code and applications." Its other projects include the freebXML Registry (a general registry adopting a generic and extensible information model that includes the ability to have arbitrary associations between entries in the registry), the Hermes Message Service Handler, and the ebMail GUI system.

The open-source freebXML CC project is managed by Digital Artefacts Europe, an open source standards-oriented software company in Jyväskylä, Finland. The freebXML CC project "is the open-source continuation of an API developed by Republica Corp., which was meant for storing Core Components in an ebXML Registry. The API was primarily developed to be used in the LomakeFi pilot, developed for the Finnish government."

More information:
CTO, Diego Ballvé, email: diego.ballve@digital-artefacts.fi
CEO, Jussi Lemmetty, email: jussi.lemmetty@digital-artefacts.fi