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Spotlight PEPPOL BIS Billing 3.0 The EU e-invoicing mandate is here — France Sept 2026, Belgium Jan 2026, Germany 2025.

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Foundations

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Standards

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Flagship messages

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Tools

OASIS

Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards. The consortium that produced UBL, ebXML, AS4, WS-Security and SAML.

Definition

OASIS Open is an international not-for-profit consortium founded in 1993 (as SGML Open), renamed OASIS in 1998. Its mandate: "to advance the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the information society" (charter). OASIS hosts more than 70 technical committees (TC) that draft and submit standards for approval. The process distinguishes several maturities: Committee Specification Draft (CSD), Committee Specification (CS), then OASIS Standard (the final stage).

Notable outputs in the EDI/B2B scope:

  • UBL — Universal Business Language (since 2004, version 2.4 in 2024): library of XML business documents (Invoice, Order, DespatchAdvice, CatalogueRequest…).
  • ebXML (with UN/CEFACT from 1999) — XML framework for e-business.
  • ebMS3 / AS4 — ebXML messaging protocols.
  • WS-Security, WS-Trust, WS-Federation, SAML, XACML — web service security.
  • OData — resource-oriented REST.
  • DocBook — XML schema for technical documentation.

Origin

OASIS was born in August 1993 as SGML Open, an association of SGML vendors aiming at interoperability tooling. The arrival of XML (published by the W3C in 1998) triggered the rename to OASIS to broaden the scope. Headquarters in Burlington (Massachusetts), with an office in Europe. The consortium is funded by member dues (Foundational, Sponsor, Contributor, Associate), including Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, SAP, the European Union, OpenPEPPOL and national ministries.

Example in context

A PEPPOL BIS Billing 3.0 invoice relies on UBL 2.1 Invoice — an OASIS Standard published in 2013 and corrected by UBL 2.3 (2021). The AS4 transport, itself an OASIS Standard since 2013, carries the document from Access Point to Access Point on the PEPPOL network. Two OASIS standards for the same use case.

  • AS4 — the ebMS3 lightweight profile.
  • ebMS3 — the messaging layer.
  • WS-Security — the OASIS web service security.
  • CEFACT — historical partner of OASIS on ebXML.

Last updated: May 14, 2026