Glossary

Aggregate Business Information Entities (ABIEs).
Root nodes and top-level structures of UBL documents. Children of document ABIEs may be Basic Business Information Entities (BBIEs) or Association Business Information Entities (ASBIEs), never ABIEs. All UBL document ABIEs (and only UBL document ABIEs) are defined within individual namespaces specific to each document as both elements and types. (https://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/os-UBL-2.3/UBL-2.3.html#S-BUSINESS-INFORMATION-ENTITIES)

Association Business Information Entities (ASBIEs).
Substructures of a UBL document. Children of ASBIEs may be Basic Business Information Entities (BBIEs) or other ASBIEs, never Aggregate Business Information Entities (ABIEs). All UBL ASBIEs (and only UBL ASBIEs) are members as elements of the UBL common aggregate components namespace, denoted in UBL schemas by the cac: prefix. (https://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/os-UBL-2.3/UBL-2.3.html#S-BUSINESS-INFORMATION-ENTITIES)

Basic Business Information Entities (BBIEs).
Leaf nodes of every UBL document structure. These are ordinary data fields such as one would expect to find in any business form, and they are realized in the schemas as individual XML elements at the bottom level of the document tree with simple content representing amounts, codes, quantities, and so on. All UBL BBIE elements (and only UBL BBIE elements) are members of the UBL common basic components namespace, conventionally denoted in UBL schemas by the cbc: prefix. (Since all namespace prefixes in XML are assigned on a per-instance basis according to namespace declarations in the individual instance, prefixes such as cbc: may be replaced with arbitrarily different namespace prefixes in actual UBL documents.) (https://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/os-UBL-2.3/UBL-2.3.html#S-BUSINESS-INFORMATION-ENTITIES)

Code lists
A code list is an artifact or element listing the codes relevant to specific terms, grouped by semantic meaning, e.g., a code list for country or language. It may be general e.g., country, or very specific to, e.g., the notification of an economic rebate. Some relate specifically to procurement e.g., contract type. Code Lists used in the ESPD Service

code list document.
A code list document has the root element <gc:CodeList>. It contains metadata describing the code list as a whole, as well as explicit code list data – codes and associated values. (http://docs.oasis-open.org/codelist/approved/genericode/oasis-code-list-representation-genericode.html)

Context/value association (CVA).
File that specifies the relationship from information items found in different document contexts to one or more external genericode files for each item. (http://docs.oasis-open.org/codelist/ContextValueAssociation/doc/context-value-association.html)

Criteria, in the context of the ESPD, either selection or exclusion, are those applied to each supplier on application to tender to validate qualification. Buyers stipulate criteria, and suppliers provide evidence that they comply to them.

Components prefixed with cac-ccv:, cac-cev, cbc-ccv and cbc-cev:

eCertis.
Information system that helps identify different certificates requested in procurement procedures across the EU. (https://ec.europa.eu/tools/ecertis/#/about)

Economic Operator (EO).
Business or other organisation which supplies goods, works or services within the context of market operations. The term is used in public procurement to cover suppliers, contractors and service providers.

eForms.
EU legislative open standard for publishing public procurement data. They are standard forms used by public buyers to publish notices on Tenders Electronic Daily—an online portal for public procurement notices from across the EU. (https://ec.europa.eu/growth/single-market/public-procurement/digital/eforms_en)

European Skills, Competence, Qualifications and Occupations (ESCO).
Is an European Commission project that works as a dictionary, describing, identifying and classifying professional occupations and skills relevant for the EU labour market and education and training. (https://ec.europa.eu/esco/portal)

EU Vocabularies.
EuroVoc is a multilingual, multidisciplinary thesaurus covering the activities of the EU, the European Parliament in particular. It contains terms in 23 official EU languages, plus in three languages of countries which are candidates for EU accession. (https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/dataset/-/resource?uri=http://publications.europa.eu/resource/dataset/eurovoc)

eSens
eSens was a project that ran from 2013 to 2017 to deliver a generic e-infrastructure used across a range of public services. Its aim was to make digital government services simpler and more cost-effective to implement for the benefit of citizens, businesses and public organisations.

European Single Procurement Document (ESPD).
Self-declaration document intended for preliminary evidence in a public procurement procedure introduced in the Article 59 of the new Public Procurement Directive 2014/24/EC. (https://github.com/ESPD/ESPD-EDM/tree/master)

European Single Procurement Document Exchange Data Model (ESPD-EDM).
Data model developed by the European Commission to define the exchange of European Single Procurement Document (ESPD) documents between Procurement stakeholder’s system. (https://github.com/ESPD/ESPD-EDM/tree/master)

genericode.
Single model and XML format (with a W3C XML Schema) defined by Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) that can encode a broad range of code list information. Note that genericode is not designed as a run-time format for accessing code list information, and is not optimized for such usage. Rather, it is designed as an interchange format that can be transformed into formats suitable for run-time usage, or loaded into systems that perform run-time processing using code list information. (http://docs.oasis-open.org/codelist/approved/genericode/oasis-code-list-representation-genericode.html)

Genericode Format
see genericode

Developed in 2011 by the Joinup initiative, the ICT Standards for Procurement prescribe the standards for EU interoperable solutions to which new initiatives must comply.

[[ISA², ISA²]] The ISA² Programme
Now Interoperable Europe, was a funding programme of the European Union that supported the development of digital solutions, which enable public administrations, businesses, and citizens in Europe to benefit from interoperable cross-border and cross-sector public services. The programme ran until 31 December 2020.

The Joinup platform
is the European Commission’s one-stop shop for interoperable, open, and free digital government ICT solutions and an online space for e-Government professionals and enthusiasts to share and learn about digital public services and initiatives.

[[Namespace Prefixes, Namespace Prefixes]] Namespace prefixes
are used in XML to avoid element name conflicts. See the W3schools definition and description.

Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS).
Company that offers standardization and de jure approval for reference in international policy and procurement. (https://www.oasis-open.org/org/)

Open User Community (OUC).
Group of users that participate or work with the ESPD-EDM.

The Publications Office of the European Union (OP). Inter-institutional office whose task is to publish the publications of the institutions of the European Union (Decision 2009/496/EC, Euratom). (https://op.europa.eu/en/home)

Semantic assets (metadata or reference data) are maintained as part of the actions for semantic interoperability by the ISA² Programme, which aims at improving semantic interoperability in European eGovernment systems by providing solutions to help European public administrations perform seamless and meaningful cross-border and cross-domain data exchanges. The ISA² Programme has developed a number of semantic specifications and interoperability solutions which are available to public administrations, namely: Core Vocabularies, the DCAT Application Profile for Data Portals in Europe (DCAT-AP) and the Asset Description Metadata Schema (ADMS). The SEMIC action is also funding the development of solutions managed by other services, such as VocBench3 which is managed by the Publications Office of the EU. More Information

Schematron.
Rule-based validation language for making assertions about the presence or absence of patterns in XML trees. It is a structural schema language expressed in XML using a small number of elements and XPath. (https://www.schematron.com/)

Tenders Electronic Daily (TED).
Online version of the 'Supplement to the Official Journal' of the EU, dedicated to European public procurement. (https://ted.europa.eu/TED/main/HomePage.do)

The "testbed" is an online tool provided to developers of ESPD Services that enables them to validate their XML ESPD Request and Response documents. Validation is the process by which xml files are tested for compliance against the schematron rules (and the Directive).

The Once-Only Principle Project (TOOP).
The TOOP exchange data model specification describes a process providing electronic messaging support for requesting specific data elements or documents and providing adequate data responses or document responses. (http://wiki.ds.unipi.gr/display/CCTF/TOOP+Exchange+Data+Model+Specification+v1.40)

UBL (Universal Business Language).
Defines a royalty-free library of standard XML business documents supporting digitization of the commercial and logistical processes for domestic and international supply chains such as procurement, purchasing, transport, logistics, intermodal freight management, and other supply chain management functions. (https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=ubl#overview)

Universal Resource Identifier (URI).
Syntax to define a way to encapsulate a name in any registered name space, and label it with the the name space, producing a member of the universal set. (https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt)

XML (Extensible Markup Language).
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a simple, very flexible text format derived from SGML (ISO 8879). Originally designed to meet the challenges of large-scale electronic publishing, XML is also playing an increasingly important role in the exchange of a wide variety of data on the Web and elsewhere. (https://www.w3.org/XML/)

XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations).
Language for transforming XML documents into other XML documents or other formats, such as HTML for web pages or plain text. (https://www.w3.org/TR/xslt-30/)

ISO/TS 15000-5:2005
forms the basis for standards development work of business analysts, business users and information technology specialists supplying the content of and implementing applications that will employ the UN/CEFACT Core Component Library (CCL). Latest version ISO 15000-5:2014, confirmed 2019. (https://www.iso.org/standard/61433.html)

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