B2B Standards Primer

What does a B2B standard include?

B2B standards are typically published as a set of electronic files. A B2B standard may include one or more of the following type of files:

Published B2B standards include human- and machine-readable files

Specification Document - Describes the rules (standard) in text, sometimes using graphics, models or examples to illustrate the standard.

Spreadsheet - Structures the standard in a matrix format using one or more spreadsheets.

Guide - Describes a brief example, detailed use case, tutorial, collection of best practices or general recommendation about how to understand and use the specification.

Coded File - Provides computer-readable code that is the standard itself. The standard rules are described in the software file.

Software Program - A software tool that is provided to help users view, use or test the standard.

Normative Specifications

Only portions of a published B2B standard define the actual rules that must be followed. Other sections/files include examples or general descriptions.

B2B standards will very clearly identify what portion of the published standard are the rules (normative) and what is supporting information (non-normative). This becomes very important when using standards... because all of the normative rules must be followed exactly as prescribed.

Normative refers to the prescribed set of rules.

Typically, the rules-portion of a each specification document, the vocabulary portion of a spreadsheet and sometimes the coded files will be identified as the normative specifications.

Guides, software programs and the example/reference portions of the specification files are generally the non-normative content, sometimes referred to as the artifacts

Standards Compliance

B2B solutions that follow the complete normative specification are called compliant solutions

Solutions that follow only some of the prescribed standard are referred to as non-compliant. Solutions that do not use any standards are considered proprietary.

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Last Updated on Tuesday, 14 July 2009 21:08