XML related standards


links to information



eBIS XML

eBIS (electronic Business Interchange Standard) XML — exchange of purchase orders between different accounting packages (developed with BASDA — Business and Accounting Software Developers’ Association) "The new standard was developed with the full support of Microsoft, and a simple ‘double-click’ on the e-mail will automatically fire-up Internet Explorer and display the order. This overcomes the ‘having the first fax machine’ problem as the recipient only needs to have an e-mail address. Similarly, next year’s versions of Microsoft Outlook and BizTalk will fully support the new standard and interface. Discussions are about to begin with the banks with a view to provide a standard XML banking interface and BASDA are directly involved with a number of Government departments in developing XML schemas for business-to-government eCommerce.”

OFX (Open Financial Exchange)

OASIS — OFX

"Open Financial Exchange supports a wide range of financial activities including consumer and small business banking; consumer and small business bill payment; bill presentment and investments, including stocks, bonds and mutual funds. Other financial services, including financial planning and insurance, will be added in the future and will be incorporated into the specification. With Open Financial Exchange financial institutions can now deliver online financial services to their customers via transactional Web sites, thin clients and popular financial management software that support Open Financial Exchange."
OFX Version 2.0 adds a (US) Tax extension covering W2 and 1099 information."

IFX (Interactive Financial Exchange)

IFX 1.1 XML specification governing business-to-business transactions for the operation of ATMs, and the means to communicate corporate payments. "IFX 1.1.0 provides a framework that supports the exchange of information between

  • cooperating financial institutions,
  • financial institutions and cooperative consumer portals, and
  • businesses and their financial service providers.

Enhancements featured in IFX 1.1.0 include:

  • The Asynchronous Processing support to allow a server that is unable to complete a response in a reasonable time to complete it at a later time.
  • The Debit and credit messages that authorize, commit and reverse debits and credits for use in self-service, point-of-sale, and other applications that involve debiting or crediting an account.
  • The Deposit Account Statement Inquiry message to support balance and transaction reporting as required in a corporate environment.
  • The Single Payment Add message to support business-to-business payment transactions."

DealBus

NOTE: this is not a standard but it is interesting to see how a company such as Dresdner have used XML. No doubt they will have input into any standard.

XML implementations at Dresdner Kleinwork Benson "DealBus aims to provide a robust, global infrastructure which guarantees that information is passed in real-time between systems in a format which is understandable to all systems. However, it must also rapidly accommodate the inevitable business changes which happen such as new financial instrument types, new systems, and replacement of existing systems.  An example follows:

<?XML VERSION='1.0' ENCODING='ISO-8859-1'?>
<Trade>
<TradeId>FXSwap624573</TradeId>
<Book>Dresdner Bank AG</book>
<Bookcode>DRBNKAG</book>
<Counterparty>Kleinwort Benson Securities</Counterparty>
<Counterpartycode>KBS</Counterpartycode>
<legs>
<Leg>
  <underlying>EUR</underlying>
  <counter>USD</counter>
  <price>1.0880</price>
  <cashflows>
<Cashflow>
  <date>19980901</date>
    <amount>10000000</amount>
   </Cashflow>
</cashflows>
 <\\Leg>
 <Leg>
  <underlying>EUR</underlying>
  <counter>USD</counter>
  <price>1.0925</price>
  <cashflows>
<Cashflow>
  <date>19990301</date>
    <amount>-10000000</amount>
   </Cashflow>
</cashflows>
 <\\Leg> </legs>
</Trade>

From this document, it is easy (for someone who is familiar with foreign exchange transaction) to infer that Dresdner Bank AG has arranged for the delivery 10 million Euros to Kleinworth Benson Securities on the 1st of September 1998 in exchange for 10,880,000 US Dollars. At the same time, Kleinwort Benson Securities has arranged that they will deliver 10 million Euros to Dresdner Bank AG on the 3rd of March, 1999 in exchange for 10,925,000 US Dollars. Formerly, this trade would probably have been confirmed either by fax or electronically through a confirmation notice delivered to their specific back-office systems. If it was to be co-mingled with other trade data and included in an excel spreadsheet for a financial controller, it would either be re-typed or a specific interface to the back office system would have to be built to accommodate the request. Now that the message is available in XML, however, it is captured in a self-describing format and can be 'consumed' and interpreted by any system with an XML parser and the logic required to process such events — no system-to-system link is necessary. Also, should either the foreign exchange or equities department decide that they wanted to upgrade their back-office systems, it would not be necessary to rebuild all of the existing interfaces. As XML has decoupled the systems from the source of the trade, it will only be necessary to build in XML parsing technology - which is relatively cheap and easy compared with full-scale systems integration. Finally, this document could exist anywhere on the network and, as it is self-describing, it would have the same meaning. No longer is it necessary to source data from one physical system — with XML we are now able to use publish-and-subscribe technology (which DealBus does indeed use) and allow the distribution of the information to occur regardless of the power, location, or platform of the source system."

see also — openadaptor

FIXML, FpML, and FinML

FpML, FinXML and FIXML
"There are a number of industry initiatives currently underway that are trying to encourage the development and subsequent use of XML based financial information exchange standards. Three of the most prominent ones would be FpML, FinXML and FIXML. FpML describes itself as 'a business information exchange standard for electronic dealing and processing of financial derivatives instruments'. The standard was created by JP Morgan and PriceWaterhouse Coopers but has subsequently been handed over to a consortium of market participants, software vendors and system integrators. It is initially focused on interest rate swaps andFRAs . FinXML has aimed to attain more comprehensive coverage. It has been designed to be a framework to create ' a single universal standard for data interchange within Capital Markets'. This framework supports the use of vocabularies that define various elements and attributes that represent financial transactions, reference data, market data, payments, settlements and confirmations. It also supports a wide variety of related products. All these vocabularies are based upon standards defined by ISDA. What might yet up stage both these standards is the proposed FIXML which is the XML'ified FIX standard. This may prove to be more palatable to banks who are supporting incumbent FIX compatible legacy systems. FIX already supports the majority of products and transactions that both FinXML and FpML are targeting."

WeatherML
A New XML-based Standard for Weather Derivatives Transactions.
WeatherML
Aims to Simplify Trading of Weather  Derivatives.

XML Quote Request
XBRL
XBRL framework
"X4GFR allows software vendors, programmers and end users who adopt it as a specification to enhance the creation, exchange, and comparison of financial reporting information. Financial reporting includes, but is not limited to, financial statements, general ledger information and regulatory filings such as annual and quarterly financial statements. X4GFR is a component of theXBRL framework." ebXMLebXML from OASIS "ebXML is a joint initiative of the United Nations body for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) and OASIS to develop a technical framework that will enable XML to be used in a consistent manner for the exchange of all electronic business data." more linksXML Related Standards Roadmap
Includes information on:

Overview of Biztalk
"Many companies report a strong interest in XML. XML, however, is so flexible that this is similar to expressing a strong interest in ASCII characters. XML enables advancements, but they are hard to achieve without a consistent framework for XML implementations. The BizTalk Framework implements a set of rules that make it possible for a broad audience to adopt a common approach to using XML. Further, as companies move beyond data modelling using XML and start automating business processes, BizTalk Framework message elements define a core set of XML elements, attributes and tags that allow the development of rich message passing technology that is optimized to understand the BizTalk Framework. This is important because XML forms the basis for an on-the-wire contract that binds systems, eliminating the need to find a common API or implementation platform."

XML.ORG Registry and Repository
"Applications that support and enable electronic business depend on XML schemas to define the rules of both the application and the data. The last year has seen rapid growth in groups developing such schemas--for horizontal applications, e.g., ebXML core business documents, as well as for vertical industries, e.g., the Open Travel Alliance, RosettaNet, etc. Simply to develop, agree upon and make these schemas available to a specific constituency, however, is not sufficient. It is often equally vital that potential members—those outside the target group--be able to access schemas. As discussed by Robin Cover in his white paper, “

Managing Names and Ontologies: An XML Registry and Repository,”  there are a number of issues that must be addressed to ensure the success of both the schemas and the applications they support."

Latest information on ebXML and RosettaNet WDVL Listing of W3C XML specs - a master list of all XML-related specifications and proposals, developed by or submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).  With links to the following specifications:

JOFX
"JOFX Enterprise Beans and Servlets implement the complete Open Financial Exchange(OFX) protocol for the
                         development and deployment of a wide range of online financial services. These include bill presentment, bill payment,
                         banking, and investment information applications, based on a multi-tiered, distributed object architecture. JOFX toolkit
                         consists of Client Enterprise JavaBeans(TM) (EJB) for financial Portal developers, and Server EJBs and Servlets for
                         Billers, Bankers, and Brokers. The JOFX components are pre-developed pieces of application code that can be quickly
                         assembled into working application systems by integrating them with legacy applications. The JOFX toolkit implements the
                         latest OFX 1.51 specification.JOFX Toolkit supports OFX as well as XML. OFX is used as Message-Oriented Middleware
                         (MOM) between financial institutions and their customers, and also for communication between financial institutions
                         themselves. XML is used by the application developer for Presentation-Oriented Publishing (POP) in the browsers with a
                         different stylesheet for each portal." OASIS standards site, ZDNet article on BizTalk server
"The standardization activities covered in this section address such areas as Frameworks, Repositories, Content Definition, Application Integration, etc"

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