UN+CCL

The UN Core Component Library (CCL) is a library of business semantics in a data model which is harmonized, audited and published by UN/CEFACT. The CCL uses Core Component Technical Specifications (CCTS) to ensure consistency and inter-operability. The library has contributions from many organizations including government and business, and deals with cross-border trade for messages for Buy, Ship and Pay business processes.

The library is essentially a collection of business entities, based on core components that can be reused in many scenarios. Business entities are the basis of documents that are restricted by context to a specific domain. Defining the context is key, as this is the basis of the restricted use of each component. For example there is a "Party" core component in the Library, which has many attributes and can be reused to define many parties within a trade transaction. The image below shows an extract from the Cross Industry Invoice (CII) in CCL v2; CI_ Trade_ Party is an Aggregate Business Information Entity (meaning it has many properties) which inherits from the Core Component named Party. With its reuse a limited number of properties are selected for this context and through its association with a trade agreement it has a CI_ Trade_ Party for seller, buyer and many others.