File or document headers have long been used to describe the information about a set of payloads in an entity that is kept separate and arm’s-length from the payloads themselves.

The metaphor of a paper envelope in which one places business documents for transport or management is apt to describe the role of an exchange header envelope in a container relationship to its payloads. Concepts of routing, authentication, non-repudiation and concealment all apply in both the metaphor and the electronic equivalent.

The Exchange Header Envelope (XHE) specifies an XML vocabulary [XML] expressing in machine-processable syntax the semantics of describing either a header to or an envelope of a set of payloads of content with information about that content. This vocabulary is modeled using the UN/CEFACT Core Component Technical Specification Version 2.01 [CCTS 2.01].

XHE, a specification developed jointly by UN/CEFACT and OASIS, is the successor to the UN/CEFACT Standard Business Document Header (SBDH) version 1.3 [SBDH] and the OASIS Business Document Envelope (BDE) version 1.1 [BDE].

The UN/CEFACT Exchange Header Envelope and the OASIS Exchange Header Envelope are the same specification developed in collaboration and published as standards by the two organizations following the practices of each.

XHE/xha:Payloads/xha:Payload/xhb:ProfileID

XHE/xhb:ProfileID

<xhb:ProfileExecutionID>
  xyz123
</xhb:ProfileExecutionID>

<xhb:ProfileExecutionID>
  xyz123
</xhb:ProfileExecutionID>

<xhb:ProfileID schemeDataURI="http://www.example.com/Invoice">Invoicing Process version 1.0
</xhb:ProfileID>

<xhb:ProfileID schemeDataURI="http://www.example.com/MsgProcess">Messaging Process version 1.0
</xhb:ProfileID>

<xhb:CustomizationID schemeDataURI="http://www.example.com/CustomDoc">Example Document version 1.0
</xhb:CustomizationID>

The Payload/CustomizationID identifies an agreement to use a subset or a user defined model of a business document associated with the XHE header envelope. When an SBDH business scope type is used for describing such a convention, the SBDH BusinessScope/Scope/InstanceIdentifier value is placed as the value of the XHE Payload/CustomizationID, while the SBDH Identifier can be expressed using the [CCTS] derived attributes of the Payload/CustomizationID element.

<xhb:CustomizationID schemeDataURI="http://www.example.com/CustomHeader">Example Header version 1.0
</xhb:CustomizationID>

The BDE DocumentTypeID identifies the document type of a business document, such as “Order”, “Invoice”, a URN, or using any convention agreed upon by the parties. The equivalent in XHE is the DocumentTypeCode, with the important difference that the BDE DocumentTypeID is a [CCTS] Identifier type, while the XHE DocumentTypeCode is a [CCTS] Code type.

<xhb:DocumentTypeCode>

  Invoice

</xhb:DocumentTypeCode>

The BDE InstanceSyntaxID indicates the syntax used to express and structure a business document, such as a MIME type or a markup language. The equivalent in XHE is the ContentTypeCode, with the important difference that the BDE InstanceSyntaxID is a [CCTS] Identifier type, while the XHE ContentTypeCode is a [CCTS] Code type.

<xhb:ContentTypeCode listID="MIME">
 text/plain
</xhb:ContentTypeCode>