Introduction

The exchange of data between two parties must often be agreed upon in a formal manner. The Exchange contract is a help for doing this. As for now, the specification of Exchange contracts are still much in the concept phase. One possible solution is that a part of the contract is XML Schema based. This would make automated verifications of data deliveries possible.

Contents of an Exchange Contract

An Exchange Contract defines what information is required in a specific data exchange. This list contains some of what must be specified:

• Identification of the DEX and its version
• Identification of the relevant conformance class (documented in the DEX)
• Identification of business concepts (which again refer to business specific sets of reference data)
• Identification of Reference data library or other Reference data sources
• Bounding scope of reference data
• Data representation rules and constraints (for data validation)
• Explanation of how that information is represented is defined in the capabilities