CEF eDelivery: New versions of AS4, BDXL, ebCore Party Id Type and SMP specifications
European Commission, 2018
The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) eDelivery team is happy to announce new versions of eDelivery specifications for AS4, BDXL, ebCore Party Id Type and SMP.
CEF eDelivery helps public administrations to exchange electronic data and documents with other public administrations, businesses and citizens, in an interoperable, secure, reliable and trusted way. The CEF eDelivery solution is based on a distributed model called the “4-corner model”. In this model, the back-end systems of the users don’t exchange data directly with each other but do this through Access Points. These Access Points are conformant to the same technical specifications and therefore capable of communicating with each other.
Background and Context
The main driver for the updates to the eDelivery specifications is the modularisation of the AS4 profile. This initiative was proposed in July 2017, and aimed to align the profile with other AS4 initiatives internationally and to make it easier to manage and extend. A modular structure increases reusability of the specifications in diverse domains, and lowers the implementation burden for the many users that only need a small subset of the existing functionality. It will also make it easier in the future to add new features or to combine eDelivery with other technologies.
As the eDelivery specifications complement each other and are used in conjunction, the eDelivery specifications other than AS4 were also updated, though to a lesser degree, to ensure continued coherence and alignment. Separately from the modularisation, the updates also reflect another year of implementation experience and feedback, from both end users and implementers.
While the resulting specifications differ markedly from the previous versions, much emphasis was put on retaining backwards compatibility. This was done to make sure that current users do not have to change their deployments and that software having previously passed CEF conformance testing for AS4 or SMP continues to be conformant.
eDelivery Specifications
All specifications have now been renamed and are now referred to as eDelivery specifications: eDelivery AS4, eDelivery BDXL, eDelivery SMP and eDelivery ebCore Party Id Type. This new approach to naming is neutral, generic and better decouples the specifications from specific, time-bounded programs such as e-SENS or CEF that, over the years, support their maintenance. The new naming approach also emphasises the alignment with, and potential for re-use in, other contexts that need secure and reliable data exchange.
eDelivery AS4 Common Profile
In the eDelivery AS4 Profile, the main change is a substantial restructuring to provide more modularity and reusability. The eDelivery AS4 profile has been reorganised into a Common Profile and a number of optional, independent add-on Profile Enhancements. The Common Profile covers all selected technical and security-related parameters and is independent of specific domains, topologies and discovery and security infrastructures. The Enhancement provide additional optional extensions.
In addition to being a subset of the earlier AS4 profile used in the former e-CODEX, e-SENS and other EU projects, the Common Profile is a full subset of the ENTSOG AS4 Usage Profile used in the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas. For providers of AS4 solutions, this shared Common Profile offers a larger combined market for their solutions than existed for either of the earlier profiles. For users in public administrations and elsewhere, this in turn increases their choice of suppliers.
The Common Profile can be used with all Profile Enhancements and provides continuity and backward compatibility with the previous versions of the e-SENS and ENTSOG profiles, for which the market already provides solutions and which are currently in production. However, in many cases those Enhancements are not needed and the bare Common Profile is sufficient.
eDelivery AS4 Profile Enhancements
In addition to a Common Profile, a number of optional add-on Profile Enhancements are defined. A first Profile Enhancement specifies use of AS4 in Four Corner Topology. A second Profile Enhancement explains how to use eDelivery AS4 with the Standard Business Document Header. Functionality associated with dynamic discovery is covered in two separate modules, one covering dynamic functionality of a sender, and the other covering dynamic functionality of a receiver.
While these eDelivery AS4 Profile Enhancements already existed in the earlier versions of the documentation, their specification now is much more precise and complete. Furthermore, important implementation details were not previously included in the eDelivery specification and could at best be found in the documentation of specific pilots or user deployments. Some were left implicit. The updated documentation is much more complete, precise and self-contained.
The introduction of the concepts of the Common Profile and optional Profile Enhancements makes it easier to more precisely define conformance and supported functionality, and to add additional features without impacting existing implementations. A first planned additional Profile Enhancement will add additional functionality for the ebMS3 “Pull” message exchange patterns.
Other eDelivery Specifications
In addition to the name change to eDelivery SMP, the new version 1.10 of the eDelivery SMP specification was updated to align with the newer versions of all eDelivery specifications, in particular the introduction of the new Dynamic Sender Profile Enhancement in the eDelivery AS4 profile, which can use discovery to send messages to communications partners that have not been pre-configured statically. The SMP profile specification explains in detail how SMP is to be used in a discovery infrastructure, the parameters used for SMP queries and the use of retrieved SMP response data in eDelivery AS4 messaging.
Other than the name change to eDelivery ebCore Party Id Type, only editorial and bibliographic improvements were made in the new version 1.4 of this specification. Other than the name change to eDelivery BDXL, the new version 1.6 of eDelivery BDXL includes minor, mostly editorial, updates.
Impact on Conformance Testing
The eDelivery Conformance Testing service will be updated to reflect the changes resulting from the modularisation of the AS4 profile.
Specifically, the existing "AS4 generic" and "e-SENS specific AS4" test groups are remapped into "Common Profile" and "Four Corner Profile Enhancement" test groups. Additional test groups for the remaining Profile Enhancements (SBDH, Dynamic Receiver and Dynamic Sender) are currently being created.
AS4 solutions that were conformant prior to the modularisation of the AS4 profile will remain eDelivery AS4 conformant against the "Common Profile" and "Four Corner Profile Enhancement". Conformance to the other Profile Enhancements can be achieved by successfully passing all mandatory tests in the test group of the specific Profile Enhancement.
AS4 solutions that were not yet conformant prior to the modularisation of the AS4 profile can choose which optional Profile Enhancements to support in addition to the mandatory "Common Profile" when registering to the Conformance Testing service.
The current eDelivery specification update does not have an impact on SMP Conformance Testing or on conformant eDelivery SMP solutions.
More Information
For more information or if you have any feedback, please contact the CEF eDelivery team by email at CEF-EDELIVERY-SUPPORT@ec.europa.eu.