The UBL Format
UBL (Universal Business Language) was developed by OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards). Like xCBL it is a library of standard electronic XML business documents. UBL 2.0 was released in 2006 and is endorsed at international level. In Denmark, UBL is mandated by law for all the invoices of the public sector. PEPPOL, the Pan-European Public Procurement OnLine project initiated by the European Commission, is aiming at expanding market connectivity and interoperability between eProcurement communities. PEPPOL's infrastructure and services for eProcurement uses standardised electronic document formats based on UBL and CEN/BII (for content and process definitions).
Currently work is in progress to adopt to the latest version UBL 2.1 which is expected to be finally released before end of 2013. The new 2.1 schemas are backward-compatible with all UBL 2.0 documents.
Two-phase validation model
UBL 2.0 assumes a two-phase validation model. In the first validation phase, the UBL document is checked for structure and vocabulary against a standard UBL 2.0 XSD schema using a generic XSD validator. In the second validation phase code list values in the instance are checked against values obtained from external code list configuration files using an XSLT 1.0 processor driven by an XSLT 1.0 stylesheet. In addition to or instead of the default codelists provided by the standard UBL 2.0 framework variant code lists can be used and additional logic can be built into the XSLT file that drives the second validation phase. This way - using Schematron-based techniques for creating custom XSLT files - even fairly sophisticated business rule checking has been implemented for the CEN/BII, EHF and OIOUBL subsets.
Use the IBX XML Validator to validate your XML documents against both XSD- and XSLT-files!
- UBL 2.0 Two-phase Validation - more information
- UBL 2.0 Standard (December 2006) - Download complete set of UBL schemas and documentation
- UBL 2.0 Update Package (May 2008) - Download updates and copy/replace into UBL 2.0 Standard directory
- UBL 2.1 format specifications
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UBL 2.1 format specifications and XML schemas download
Subsets of UBL
Based on the UBL 2.0 standard a group of Northern European countries and organizations developed a Northern European subset (NES) of UBL 2.0 documents. The main focus of NES was to define the semantic use of UBL 2.0 as applied to specific business processes and to specifically describe the use of individual elements to avoid conflicting interpretation. Based on local market needs and priorities the participating countries have then defined their own strategies for implementation of the NES deliverables. The implementations of UBL 2.0 (based on or developed close to NES) which are supported by the IBX Connect platform are listed below.