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I've come across an application that needs to send invoice information via FTP to various clients. The XML being output by the application is pretty simple however it does not conform to any particular standards (I imagine its home-grown).

Now a colleague has mentioned cXML as a potential standard that we can use for invoice data and its widely available, however its a bit outdated as it uses DTD to validate the invoice data.

So basically I was wondering.: Do you know of any other standards that are currently in use for transmitting this type of information?

Thanks in advance

Steven de Salas
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  • Sadly, everyone makes up a new "standard" with every new project and technology. – William Walseth Dec 09 '11 at 14:43
  • As long as you are not enforced to, I don't see the need to comply with some standard just to follow the buzz du jour. The only driving forces you should consider are your requirements I think. – menjaraz Dec 09 '11 at 18:29
  • Hi mejaraz. Getting clients to pay invoices is hard enough as it is without convincing them to also adhere to a languge that they wont ever use with anyone else. While i agree with your desire to stay away from 'buzz de jour' in this case following a standard helps everyone in the long run. – Steven de Salas Dec 13 '11 at 08:52
  • This question is a duplicate of [XML invoice specification - Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2497115/xml-invoice-specification), which has a bit more detail in the answer. – nealmcb Mar 11 '12 at 14:02

1 Answers1

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Try looking into Universal Business Language (UBL).

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=ubl

austincheney
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