OAGi Signs Memorandum of Understanding with HR Open Standards Consortium

To all OAGi members and Friends:

We are pleased to announce that OAGi has signed an updated Memorandum of Understanding with the HR Open Standards Consortium. This MoU underscores and amplifies a partnership that has lasted for seven years, since our first MoU was signed in 2007.

The MoU states that in the interest of advancing interoperability and reducing costly duplication of effort, HR Open Standards and OAGi each resolve to:

• Remove architectural and design differences that prevent enterprises from effectively implementing both business libraries together
• Identify and eliminate areas where the standards or standards activities of the two organizations overlap
• Work towards the alignment of data models where business justification for differences cannot be established

To support the efficiency and interoperability goals enumerated above, OAGi and the HR Open Standards Consortium have agreed to the actions below:

• An interoperable data model using a modularity model and business library structure
• Common foundational standards, including relevant specifications produced by the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT).
• Use of the OAGIS Business Object Document (BOD) technology for design and construction of business messages
• Common approaches if possible for expressions of their data models. This can include XML, JSON, and other technology expressions as needed

We think this is a very important partnership and we are very pleased to have the HR Open Standards Consortium as our continuing partner in the Open Standards world.

OAGi News for June 2014

Hi and welcome to our June 2014 newsletter! This is our monthly newsletter for the OAGi community.

For regular updates of activities and happenings, you can follow us on Facebook here. You can also find us on LinkedIn here, and Twitter here. We ask our members and friends to "like" and follow us.

Remember, if you are not yet a member of OAGi you can see the benefits of OAGi membership here.

OAGIS 10.1 is Coming!

We are lucky that we have several large members, including Oracle and Microsoft, who are implementing OAGIS 10.0 and we are finding things that need to be added or updated to this groundbreaking new release.

In addition, Boeing is also one of the members implementing OAGIS 10.0 and we are learning a great deal about making OAGIS the Aerospace and Defense standard along with our already existing support for Automotive, Chemical, Agricultural, Metals, High Tech, Life Sciences, Logistics, Retail and others. 

As a result of these events we are listening very hard and the membership has rallied to help make the changes necessary. We don't have a date yet for 10.1 but it will be soon so look for announcements.

This release will be entirely backwards compatible with OAGIS 10.0.

OAGi Work Programs Update

The work programs continue to make tremendous progress! Our current Working Groups include:

1. Semantic Refinement and Tooling
2. Smart Manufacturing Working Group
3. Virtual Business Object (VBO)
4. B2B Network Collaboration

Semantic Refinement and Tooling

Working Group Chair, Serm Kulvatunyou from NIST

The purpose of this Working Group is to advance the semantic precision of interface definitions exposing OAGIS.

The planned steps to accomplish this object include:

Develop a meta-model for holding OAGIS content that satisfies the following high-level requirements:

• Allow for import of OAGIS developer schemas
• Allow for precise content contextualization

Implement a prototype, open source tool, which in addition to above requirements:

• Allow for export of OAGIS contextualized standalone schema or other expressions
• Allow for import of OAGIS contextualized standalone schema

Possible Future scope

• Round trip export of OAGIS developer schemas
• OWL/RDF model
• OAGIS semantic content life-cycle management

The work so far has focused on an RDMS Data Base that essentially contains the design of the CCTS 3.0 from UN/CEFACT and then populate it with OAGIS Content.

This work is now mostly completed and the next step is to design the software to be built to load OAGIS into the DBMS.

Smart Mfg Working Group

Working Group Chair, Nenad Ivezic from NIST

The OAGi Smart Manufacturing Working Group is an umbrella activity to drive thinking, dialog, and action regarding Smart Manufacturing, including manufacturing supply chains at OAGi.  However, the WG would assure cross-organizational collaboration with key folks in other organizations when appropriate.

The focus in the WG is to drive business case development and agenda at both strategic and tactical level and (2) spin-off/collaborate with focused technical groups in both OAGi WGs and elsewhere. 

Virtual Business Object Working Group

The Working Group Chair, Frank Heinrich from iBASEt

The Scope of this Working Group is:

• Virtual Business Object Definition
• Object that has multiple parts owned by different owners
• Single Master Repository solutions do not address all the issues
• Need to identify which properties of an object are the responsibility of which owning or originating systems
• Need to identify what use or operations are allowable on the properties by non-owner systems.
• Need to identify business process or usage patterns that are of interest
• Some aspects may be addressable by the current *_agency attributes
• Some additional attributes or elements may be needed
• The WG will also look at something to help control/explain the relations between different BODs
• For example, update the Item Master before processing the PO or What do I do if I get an update to the BOM and the Item does not exist yet

B2B Network Collaboration

Working Group Chairs, Ian Hedges, E2open and Satish Rmanathan, Oracle

The purpose of this Working Group is to enhance or add to the OAGIS Standard for Trading Partners to setup messaging interactions and exchange messages through a B2B service provider.

This includes:

• Interactions initiated by "Tenants" on the Service Provider network
• Messages delivered to "Trading Partners" who are setup on the network
• "Tenants" interact with the Service Provider network using proposed new OAGIS messages
• Service Provider transforms and delivers messages to Trading Partners in their supported message format
• Service Provider receives messages from Trading Partners in their supported message format, transforms to OAGIS and delivers to tenant

Invitation to Participate:

We invite all members to join us and if you are interested in any of the programs above, please write to us at inquiry@oagi.org.

OAGi Common JSON Initiative

OAGi has been leading an initiative since the Third Quarter of 2013 that is looking at the various practices and approaches to JSON implementations across standards organizations.

We are currently working with the STAR and HR Open Standards because they have JSON initiatives and they also use our BOD Platform. We have recently invited XBRL to sit in and OASIS is now interested as well. We plan to expand this as it is appropriate. 

The group is sharing their plans and experiences as well as surveying other standards organizations for their plans or use of JSON. We are thinking is that it took years to sort out an XML Naming and Design Rules (NDR) that we all use so it is not too soon to look at JSON to see if the same approach is appropriate.

OAGi on You Tube!

Don't forget OAGi Staff have started up an OAGi You Tube channel where they will be uploading learning mechanisms around OAGi, OAGIS, B2B, Mobile, Cloud, and other interoperability topics.

There are two parts to the Channel:

1. OAGIS for new users
2. OAGIS Information

You can find us on You Tube here and here. We invite you to go look around, follow the Channels, and to send us your feedback and ideas.

Meeting Calendar for 2014

Our planned calendar for 2014 is below.  We are also planning a series of webinars and I encourage you to look for the announcements.

Policy Board Meeting	April 15, 2014	NIST	Gaithersburg, Maryland
Plenary and Working Groups	April 16 - 17, 2014 - Completed. Presentations have been posted here.  You must be logged in with member or meeting attendance privileges.	NIST	Gaithersburg, Maryland

Policy Board Meeting	November 2014, dates to be determined	Oracle	Redwood Shores, CA, USA
Plenary and Working Groups	November 2014, dates to be determined	Oracle	Redwood Shores, CA, USA

OAGi Announces agreement with Strategy and Enterprise Architecture Society

I am pleased to announce that OAGi (www.oagi.org) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Strategy & Enterprise Architecture Society (SEAS). 

SEAS is a non-profit organization that promotes an open and unbiased R&D community that shares practical experiences and debates issues to provide valuable insights in the areas of Innovation, Strategy, Enterprise Architecture, and Change Management.

The society also works to disseminate practical knowledge and research.  You can find SEAS on LinkedIn here and their website here.  http://www.bluelighthouse.org.

Purpose of MoU

The purpose of the MoU is to collaborate with the intention of increasing awareness of each other's organization and efforts with the purpose to increase membership and involvement in both OAGi and SEAS.

"This MOU marks a key milestone for SEAS Inc. in it mission to help organizations achieve a competitive advantage.  The partnership with OAGi exemplifies Open Innovation and solidifies our efforts in making an impact in the Strategy & Innovation, Enterprise Architecture, and Change Management space." Said Fadi Hindi, CEO of SEAS Inc.

"This is a natural fit for us and we are pleased to be a partner with SEAS Inc.", said David Connelly, CEO of OAGi.  "We are looking forward to working with a group of like-minded persons like SEAS and we look to expand OAGi's reach as well and SEAS's reach"   

Thank you all for your support and we will be making more announcements as activities roll out.

OAGIS 10.0 is Here! It is now available for download

I am pleased to announce that OAGIS 10.0 is now available for download.  As most of you know this is the result of several years and hundreds of hours of contribution by our members.

  

We started this effort with several goals, including:

• Building functional equivalence with the CIDX Chem eStandards as part of our agreement to merge in 2008. 

• Adoption of the UN/CEFACT CCTS and NDR 3.0 to increase OAGIS interoperability with other standards for our users 

• Thorough review and harminization of common objects with HR-XML 

• Review of all the content of OAGIS to update the capabilities in areas such as eCommerce, Finance, Manufacturing, CRM, etc. 

• Complete review of all OAGIS artifacts to ensure consistency through the standard 

• Complete review of the OAGIS documentation to improve the content and the Scenarios 

• Improve the Data Management capabilities through updating the Verbs and the Verb processing 

I am pleased to say we have reached all of these goals and more through the hard work of our membership.  OAGIS 10.0 is our platform for the future and it is the technology we will base our Mobile, Cloud, JSON work, along with several other planned initiatives.  

For a presentation of OAGIS 10.0 I invite you to review this presentation or go to our website to download it. Members, please remember to sign in.

Thank you to all for your tremendous efforts in completing this special effort.  I congratulate you all!

Excellent Context Specification Working Group Meeting on Tuesday

We had an excellent Context Specification Working Group on Tuesday, June 20, 2013.  The members decided to take a multi phased approach with the first phase to include a survey of experienced member’s practices and document them.

We also decided to document the reasons for and the uses of their implementation of Context.  These will go into a second document that becomes incorporated to the survey of practices.

We identified the list of experienced members and uses of OAGIS and we will begin with their stories next week.

We welcome all members to join us by writing to us here and we welcome non-members to join us as well by writing to us here.

OAGIS 10.0 Release Candidate Three is closed - GA is next step

I am pleased to announce that the OAGIS 10.0 Release Candidate Three period is now closed. Thank you to all who helped make it happen.

The next steps now are to review the feedback, and prepare the technology for shipment. The process flow from the OAGi Development Methodology is just below.

We will be working with the OAGi Community to make this happen over the summer. As we get closer to that time, more details will be announced. Stay tuned for more announcements!

Thank you for your support.

New OAGi Context Specification Kickoff Meeting

We had the kick off meeting for our new Context Specification last Tuesday, May 10 and it was a great success.  We had a good crowd and we reviewed and updated the Project Definition.

The purpose of the Working Group is to build a Specification that is a normative document on how to do Context for OAGIS and other XML message Types.  It will be a separate standard. 

This work will focus on practicality and implementability and will not require special tools or tools that have not yet been built to implement.

We will gather use cases, develop a requirements document, gather current state of the art examples, and develop the specification document.

To all who are interested, we welcome your inquiries or you can go download the Project Definition from our website here.

Our next meeting is Tuesday, June 11, at 4 PM EDT.

OAGIS 10.0 Release Candidate Three is now available for Member Review

I am very pleased to announce that OAGIS 10.0 Release Candidate Three is now available for Member Review!

AS WITH ALL OAGi RELEASE CANDIDATES, THIS RELEASE IS NOT TO BE TAKEN INTO PRODUCTION AS IT WILL CHANGE BEFORE THE GENERALLY AVAILABLE RELEASE IS COMPLETE.

This Member Review contains the Chemical Industry content from our Gap Analysis with the Chem eStandards.  That was part of our agreement with CIDX when they merged with OAGi in 2009.

Public Review Three also contains the HR-XML harmonization work that Steffen Fohn of ADP has been working on as well as some manufacturing enhancements.

This Public Review will run for 30 calendar days and will conclude on June 15, 2013. From there we will review the feedback and prepare for the General Availability.

Thank you in advance for participating in this Public Review. You can download the Public Review Release Candidate Three here.  We also provide links to the License and the feedback form on this page.

Please remember you must be logged as a member to participate.  Please let us know if you have a problem.

OAGi News for May 2013

Hi and welcome to our May 2013 newsletter. This is our monthly newsletter for the OAGi community.

For regular updates of activities and happenings, you can follow us on Facebook here.  You can also find us on LinkedIn here, and Twitter here.  We ask our members and friends to “like” and follow us.

Remember, if you are not yet a member of OAGi you can see the benefits of OAGi membership here.

OAGi Member Spotlight

This month we are continuing the highlighting of our recent Outstanding Contributor Award winners.  This issue we are highlighting Tom Fannon from Ashland.  Tom has been instrumental in leading the transition from CIDX since 2009 and he has served in the capacity of Chair of the OAGIS Chemical Industry Council since that time.

Below you can find a summary list of his many contributions to our community.

Tom Fannon, Ashland

2009 - Present   Member of the Policy Board

2009 - Present   Chair of Chemical Industry Council

2009 - Present   Key Chemical Industry Rep for OAGIS 10

2012 - Led the Review and Approval of Chem eStandards 5.2

2011 - Led the Review and Approval of Chem eStandards 5.1

2010 - Led or participated on three Webinars

2009 - Led the transition from CIDX to a successful launch of the Chemical Council

Please join me in thanking Tom for his many contributions to the efforts of the Open Applications Group.

Our 2013 Spring Plenary Meeting a big Success!

Our Spring 2013 Plenary Meeting and Working meetings were once again hosted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) located in Gaithersburg, Maryland.  We met on May 2 and 3 and had excellent attendance, terrific presentations, and great discussion.  Our presentations included:   

- An update on the OAGIS Mobile, Cloud, and JSON Initiative
- Special Presentations from NIST on their new Supply Chain and Sustainability Initiatives
- A review and update on NIST sponsored feasibility study for expressing OAGIS Scenarios in BPMN format
- Review of the ADP REST API Design Guide from one of our Outstanding Contributors, Steffen Fohn
- A terrific Case study from Command Alkon, an OAGi member

- An OAGIS Release 10 Introduction and Review

This presentations will be available on our website soon.  Check for the announcement.

Thanks to all for making this meeting a great success!

New Working Groups Coming!

Four new Project Definitions were presented at our recent Plenary meeting.  They included:

1.    Context Specification – A proposal to build a new OAGi Specification for contextualizing XML messages. 

2.    Enhanced Batch Processing – A proposal to build a wrapper definition to support batching of XML messages.  It is intended that this will also be a separate Specification

3.    OAGIS Release 10 Enhanced Documentation – a proposal for a multi-phased building out of the OAGIS documentation content and the addition of tools to provide a better user experience.

4.    Advancing Computer Interpretable Communication of Manufacturing Information

These are going to be sent to the Policy Board soon and you should see the Call for Participation for each one after that.  Stay tuned!

If you are interested in joining any OAGi Working Group please write to us at inquiry@oagi.org.

Mobile, Cloud, JSON Initiative continues with a great deal of interest

The Working Group has made a decision as to the form of JSON they plan to support and will soon be working on OAGIS message examples expressed in JSON.

If you are interested in joining the Working Group please write to us at inquiry@oagi.org.

OAGIS Release 10 Public Review Three is coming soon!

We are expecting that OAGIS Release 10 Release Candidate Three will be available for download and review the week of May 13, 2013. 

This Release Candidate is expected to contain the Chemical Industry content from our Gap Analysis with the Chem eStandards.  That was part of the agreement with CIDX when they merged with OAGi in 2009.  Public Review Three is also planned to contain the HR-XML harmonization work that Steffen Fohn of ADP has been working on as well as some manufacturing enhancements.

The Working Group continues to meet to review and wrap up the technical work.  Once OAGIS Release 10 goes General Availability sometime this summer, we will be hosting a series of webinars that will brief participants on the features of OAGIS Release 10.

Look for the announcement of this Release Candidate next week.  Thanks to all who helped make this possible.

BPMN efforts making good progress

Denis Gagné did a terrific review of his NIST sponsored research into expressing the OAGIS Scenarios using Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) at our Plenary Meeting on May 2 at NIST in Gaithersburg.

There he reviewed what BPMN is and how it is used as well as the different types of diagramming possible using it.   We used a good portion of the second day to work with Denis to resolve his questions on OAGIS and keep him moving forward.

It is not intended that BPMN will replace our current Scenarios that use UML Sequence Diagrams but will complement them.

An example of the work of an OAGIS Procure to Pay BPMN Scenario based on our UML Sequences Diagram version is just below.

Meeting Calendar for 2013

Our planned calendar for 2013 is below.  Stay tuned for the specific date and time announcements.  We are also planning a series of webinars covering topics on Chemical Industry B2B, OAGIS Release 10, and Mobile and Cloud efforts.

Policy Board Meeting - Completed	Wednesday, May 1, 2013	NIST	Gaithersburg, Maryland
Plenary and Working Groups - Completed	Thursday and Friday, May 2 -3, 2013	NIST	Gaithersburg, Maryland

a

Policy Board Meeting	November 19, 2013	Oracle	Redwood Shores, CA, USA
Plenary and Working Groups	November 20 - 21, 2013	Oracle	Redwood Shores, CA, USA

SECOND REMINDER: Time to register for OAGi Meetings in Gaithersburg, MD May 2 - 3, 2013

This is your reminder that it is time to register for our Open Applications Group Meetings to be held on Thursday, May 2 and Friday, May 3, 2013.  The meeting will be hosted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for the 12th year in a row.

  

We encourage you to make your plans as early as possible to save on fares and hotels. We also encourage you to register as soon as possible.

You can learn more about the location of the meeting, hotel, get directions, and register for the meeting just below.

We look forward to seeing you there!

 HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE

 - Update on the OAGIS Mobile, Cloud, and JSON Initiative
- Special Presentation from NIST on their new Supply Chain and Sustainability Initiatives
- Update on OAGi BPMN work
- OAGi Updates and briefings on Working Group activities
- OAGIS Release 10 Introduction
- Working Group meeting half day on day two

 MEETING AGENDA

The meeting agenda may be viewed or downloaded here.

If you have any questions, please write to us at meetings@oagi.org. We encourage you to make your reservations as soon as possible and we look forward to seeing you there!

REGISTER NOW - EVERYONE IS WELCOME

All OAGi members attend for free, but you do not have to be an OAGi member to attend. Individual members and non-members pay only a $325.00 fee to cover expenses.

Non-members may also register to attend the meeting online as a training exercise and you will gain access to the recordings of the presentations.  This will cost only US $199.00.

If you plan to attend, you must register for security requirements. You can register for the meeting on our web site here.  If you are not a member, you can pay for your nominal meeting fees at that time.

MEETING LOCATION INFORMATION

NIST Headquarters Address:

National Institute of Standards and Technology
100 Bureau Drive

Gaithersburg, MD 20899
 The National Institute of Standards & Technology is located near Gaithersburg, Maryland, just off Interstate Route 270, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the center of Washington, D.C. NIST provides shuttle service from the Shady Grove Metro (subway) station.

For further information on transportation, food/dining, hotels/motels and more see the Visitor Information page.

Link to map is here.

Directions to Main Campus

From northbound I-270 take Exit 10, Route 117 West, Clopper Road. Bear right at the first light onto Clopper Road/West Diamond Avenue. At the next light, turn left onto the NIST grounds. 

From southbound I-270 take Exit 11, Route 124, Montgomery Village Avenue/Quince Orchard Road. Bear right at the first light onto Route 124 West, Quince Orchard Road. After you merge onto Rt. 124, Quince Orchard Road, turn left at the second light onto Route 117, West Diamond Avenue. Turn right at the first light onto NIST grounds.

NIST Metro Shuttle

 NIST provides shuttle service for official visitors and staff to and from the Shady Grove Metro Station. Visitors using Metro can meet the NIST shuttle at the east side "Kiss & Ride" area of the Shady Grove Metro Station at 15 and 45 minutes past the hour from 8:00 am to 5:30 pm. The shuttle departs from the front of the NIST Administration Building on the hour and half hour.

The shuttle operates Monday through Friday except on federal holidays.
Bus Station - Union Station
Subway Station - Shady Grove Metro (4 mi S)
Train Station - Union Station

 HOTEL INFORMATION

 Please make your own hotel reservations. Some local hotels include:

=========================================================

Courtyard Gaithersburg Washingtonian Center
204 Boardwalk Place
Gaithersburg, Maryland 20878 USA
Phone: 1-301-527-9000
Fax: 1-301-527-9001
The website is here.

 =========================================================

The Marriott Washingtonian
9751 Washingtonian Boulevard
Gaithersburg, Maryland 20878 USA
Phone: 1-301-590-0044
The website is here.

 ========================================================

Hilton Washington DC North/Gaithersburg
620 Perry Parkway, Gaithersburg,
Maryland, United States 20877
Tel: 1-301-977-8900
The website is here.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

David