This meeting was hosted by IRS at its facility in Lanham, Maryland. Ed Coia chaired the meeting on site and Kirk Keller participated via teleconference.

Jon Bosak presented an update on Universal Business Language 2.0 (UBL). He noted that it is an international standard for common business documents, and the UBL formatting specifications address the visualization aspects of such documents. Brand Niemann commented that the Census Bureau standardized the terminology on its survey form but also mapped its elements to the semantics of other data sets. Brand also mentioned the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) Data Reference Model (DRM) and suggested that an upper ontology is needed to standardize as much as possible while mapping where necessary. Jon responded that he was not sure the Danish model for mandating a standard would work in the U.S. but Brand suggested that it be anchored in something like WordNet, with voluntary compliance.

Susan Turnbull asked about coordination with the General Services Administration (GSA) and Jon noted that resources are a constraint. Marion Royal of GSA formerly participated in the UBL TC but is no longer able to do so. Owen Ambur indicated he would be surprised if UBL were not taken into account by GSA in the Integrated Acquisition Environment (IAE) but that it should also be incorporated into the DRM as well as the FEA Technical Reference Model (TRM). With respect to resources, Owen also noted that the ET.gov process can be used to try to build a CoP around UBL and that the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) program management office may be a good candidate to try to engage because they seem to have resources for work like this.

Kirk Keller asked about XSL-FO and the environment that is required for UBL. Jon noted that formatting is a very complex issue, requiring special skills that are scarce but that one of the foremost experts is engaged in the UBL TC. He also noted that a free runtime XSL-FO application is available for exclusive use with UBL 1.0. However, implementing XSL-FO for UBL 2.0 will be much more difficult because it involves a much larger set of documents.

With respect to an adoption strategy and the possibility of a mandate to use the standard, Mike Onder noted that the Kansas City may take a leading role in that regard. He also noted that Columbus, Ohio, Visa and MasterCard are considering prospects for implementing UBL. Jon said the involvement of U.S. cities is interesting because Hong Kong and Singapore were the ones who drove specification of UBL's transportation-related documents.

Jon's presentation is available at http://xml.gov/presentations/oasis5/ubl.pdf

Following the mid-morning break, Syliva Webb briefed the group on UNeDocs, via telecon and Netviewer. She noted that UNeDocs are designed to smooth the transition to what she called "digital paper" records and that Adobe and Microsoft now have the ability to automatically generate UNeDocs. She commented on the relationships to the FEA DRM and TRM as well as to UN/CEFACT and X12. Whereas most other efforts go directly to the payload model, she noted UNeDocs uses the UN Layout Key (UNLK) and amounts to an international trade reference model. Betty Harvey asked if they are using any particular format, at which point Sylvia ran a media player presentation in response. Brand asked about the degree of precision for printing, noting that the Census Bureau requires a high degree of precision for its survey forms. Sylvia responded that the answer depends upon the tools that consume the documents, and that PDF and other formats can be used.

Sylvia's presentation is available at http://xml.gov/presentations/gefeg2/UNeDocs.pdf and the UNeDocs implementation guide is at http://xml.gov/presentations/gefeg2/UNeDocsGuide.pdf

With support from Amin Hassam and Adam Schwartz on site and Paul Woods via telecon, Owen Ambur updated the group via teleconference and the Internet regarding new submissions to the ET.gov site, XML-related submissions, and Stage 2 CoPs.

Brand Niemann, supported by JL Needham of Google via teleconference, described the Federal Site Maps initiative. Since site maps are XML documents, he noted that the standard is appropriate for consideration by the xmlCoP and he said the Federal Web Content Managers will be briefed next. He also provided a quick update on the Agile Financial Data Systems (AFDS), mentioning pilot projects and microformats. Brand's presentation on site maps is available at http://xml.gov/presentations/sicop/sitemaps.pdf

Finally, KC Morris demonstrated NIST's Quality of Design (QOD) tool using the Department of the Navy's (DON) XML naming and design rules (NDR) to test the schema drafted by the Strategy Markup Language (StratML) CoP. While the test reveal several errors, she noted that some of the concepts contained in the Core Components Technical Specification (CCTS), such as Association Business Information Entities (ABIEs) may not apply to StratML. She said Salisfou Sidi identified seven rules in the DON NDR that probably should apply. For example, the schema version information should be provided and xsd:all should not be used. However, it will be up to the StratML CoP to decide which rules to apply, in which case the CoP or anyone else can use the NIST tool to create their own test profiles.

Betty Harvey noted that she has taken the UBL NDR in MS Word format and converted it to DocBook format to create an UBL NDR profile. She also created her own XSLT stylesheet. Part of the problem that Betty and her colleagues on the XML Schema Interoperability Work Group (XSI WG) are trying to address is how to enable users to submit NDR profiles if they don't have XML tools to do so. Toward that end, Betty has developed an XForms interface whereby users can upload and edit NDR.

KC concluded by noting the the QOD is a work in progress, but she noted that a profile has been created for IRS documents and she encouraged others to contribute NDR to the QOD.

Ed Coia concluded the meeting by noting that time did not permit discussion of future meeting schedules and logistics in coordination with the XBRL CoP, but that such arrangements may be discussed at the XBRL CoP meeting in the afternoon.

Following the xmlCoP meeting in the morning, the XBRL CoP and StratML CoP met separately in the afternoon.

Those who participated in this meeting of the xmlCoP in person included: