Open Standards for OFBiz

UBL

General Info

Site: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=ubl

Current Version: 2.0

Detailed info archive: http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/os-UBL-2.0.zip

Parts of the Standard to Implement

Related Data Model Elements

Current Usage in OFBiz

OAGIS

General Info

OAGIS is a standard created by the Open Applications Group.

Site: http://www.oagi.org/

Current version: 9.3

Parts of the Standard to Implement

Related Data Model Elements

Current Usage in OFBiz

The following messages are implemented in the specialpurpose/oagis component:

1. Confirm BOD (send and receive)
2. Process Shipment (send)
3. Receive Delivery (Send)
4. Sync Inventory (receive)
5. Show Shipment (receive)
6. Acknowledge Delivery (receive), for PO, RMA, Status Change

There is a service defined for each of these in the specialpurpose/oagis/servicedef/services.xml file.

Note that these were implemented against and older version of OAGIS: 7.2.1

XBRL

General Info

The general idea here is that instead of creating PDF or other reports (or in addition to the basic PDF reports) we can use these as a standardized structure for financial reporting. I've read about XBRL over the years and from what I can tell in the last couple of years it has really become commonly used among companies large and small for internal reporting as well as reporting to government agencies in many parts of the world, and for sharing financials informations with partners (more accounting firms and such than suppliers or customers, just to clarify).

This would be a great thing for OFBiz, and leaning on such standards will lend some clout to our accounting component. I figure that the numbers coming out of the accounting package are the most important thing about it, so basing those on a standard like this gives us a huge step forward for prospective user organizations both large and small.

Technical information about the XML document structures and such is here (look at the first section, for XBRL 2.1): http://www.xbrl.org/SpecRecommendations/

Parts of the Standard to Implement

XBRL is a file structure for financial data that has a number of taxonomies defined on top of it. Those taxonomies are the real spec for what should be included in each report.

There are three that would be great to have done for our most likely near future users:

1. IFRS-GP 2006: International Financial Reporting Standards General Purpose Financial Reporting for Profit-Oriented Entities http://xbrl.iasb.org/int/fr/ifrs/gp/2006-08-15/summary_page.html

2. US-GAAP-CI: United States Generally Accepted Accounting Practices for Commercial and Industrial http://www.xbrl.org/us/fr/gaap/ci/2005-02-28/us-gaap-ci%20Summary%20Page.htm

3. XBRL GL: General Ledger Taxonomy http://www.xbrl.org/GLTaxonomy/

The first two are more for reporting that can actually be delivered to government and other agencies, and used with tools internally for visualization and such. The third will allow us to export financial information in a standard way that can then be combined with financial information from other systems for reporting. For large organizations this could be the key to letting OFBiz run everything it is responsible for and then export financial data in a standard way so the corporation can use XBRL compatible tools to combine it with information from other systems and such.

A more general list of financial reporting taxonomies is available here: http://www.xbrl.org/FRTaxonomies/

Related Data Model Elements

Current Usage in OFBiz