eDelivery roadmap for October 2022 and beyond

The improvement of the eDelivery service package allows for increasingly fast, reliable, and trustworthy data-sharing. In response to the users’ request and newly developed underlying technologies, the building block roadmap for October 2022 and beyond contains a number of updates delivering a wide range of new capabilities.Specifically, the final release of the Service Metadata Locator (SML) is scheduled to take place this month, and new versions of Domibus will be released in Q1 and Q4 2023. A release of the Service Metadata Publisher (SMP) is planned for release in mid-2023.

Firstly, a new version of the European Commission’s sample implementation of an eDelivery Service Metadata Locator, SML 4.2, will be released in October 2022. SML is an eDelivery software component central to a messaging infrastructure that enables dynamic discovery through DNS lookups. It will be largely a technical release building upon the currently used version 4.1.1 that will upgrade libraries to the latest versions to mitigate security threats, support the latest versions Tomcat and MySql and facilitate integration into the Docker ecosystem by adding support for SpringBoot.

Along with the SML, a new version of the Service Metadata Publisher (SMP) is also being prepared for release in mid-2023. The SMP enables the process of dynamic discovery of service metadata information by storing, exchanging and performing lookups of the service metadata (e.g., the URL, certificate and capabilities) of participants in an eDelivery messaging infrastructure. The new version, SMP 5.0, will introduce support for publishing multiple metadata documents (in particular, OASIS ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile 3.0 and OASIS SMP 2.0 ones), cater for Access Points that want to publish different configurations for the security algorithms they understand, update to the latest versions of Java, Tomcat, WebLogic and MySQL and facilitate integration into the Docker ecosystem by adding support for SpringBoot.

Additionally, improved samples implementation of an eDelivery Access Point, Domibus 5.1, and Domibus 6.0 are planned for release in Q1 and Q4 2023. Domibus is the European Commission’s open-source sample implementation based on the eDelivery AS4 profile. These new releases will include several additional features: the support for different security algorithm configurations, separate and multiple types of private keys to be used by the different security configurations, retry strategy with increasing delay between attempts, a separately configurable retention policy for metadata, and further new features and improvements.

The eDelivery Building Block

eDelivery is a building block that provides technical specifications and standards, installable software and ancillary services to allow projects to create a network of nodes for secure digital data exchange.

Domibus is the sample software provided by the European Commission to implement an eDelivery AS4 Access Point for the interoperable, secure and reliable exchange of data. It is based on the eDelivery AS4 profile, an open technical specification for the secure, web-based, payload-agnostic exchange of data or documents.

SMP is the sample software provided by the European Commission to implement an eDelivery Service Metadata Publisher (SMP) for publishing and retrieving data necessary for an eDelivery party to dynamically configure its system for message exchange with counterparties using eDelivery. It is based on the eDelivery SMP profile, an open technical specification for publishing service metadata within a 4-corner network.

SML is the sample software provided by the European Commission to implement an eDelivery Service Metadata Locator (SML) for an eDelivery party to discover the URLs of other counterparties using eDelivery Access Points and their corresponding metadata. It is based on the eDelivery BDXL profile, an open technical specification for locating Access Points within a network, and on the PEPPOL SML Specification, a technical specification defining a BDXL administration API. 

Stay tuned for the latest updates on the eDelivery services by checking the building block's web page. For more information, please contact us via our portal or by e-mail: EC-EDELIVERY-SUPPORT@ec.europa.eu.

Photo by Karsten Würth on Unsplash