Group's aim is electronic commerce infrastructure

Mechanical Engineering, Jun 2001 by Thilmany, Jean

A group of international organizations have been working together to develop a set of global ecommerce standards. The group includes scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md., who are working in conjunction with the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards and the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business, both of Geneva.

The standards constitute electronic business test markup language, or ebXML, and the organizations' goal by use of the language is to specify an e-commerce infrastructure where enterprises of any size and in any geographical location can conduct business with each other. The standard language will enable businesses to find partners, develop business agreements, and find and process necessary documents for business transactions, according to NIST. The language is expected to lower the cost of exchanging business information electronically, according to NIST.

The documents and messages exchanged online would be represented in the ebXML language. The language codes documents and messages in a way that allows computers to exchange information and act on it.