ASC X12's Educational Workshops Empower Participants to Apply CICA.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

FALLS CHURCH, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 17, 2004

The Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X12's Convergence and Outreach Task Group (COTG) recently completed its third educational workshop in its XML Architecture Seminar Series. Held in McLean, VA on April 27-28, the workshop introduced the underlying concepts of ASC X12's Context Inspired Component Architecture (CICA) to an audience representing an array of industries including energy, healthcare, government, computer software and medical.

Attendee Debora A. Parker, Interoperability Architect for ManTech Advanced Systems International, Inc. said, "I came away from this workshop with a much greater understanding of this new architecture and look forward to putting into implementation very soon." Lisa Miller, COTG Chair and CICA instructor said, "CICA represents a new and innovative approach to providing a single XML standard for cross-industry that utilizes a common business vocabulary. As with anything new, communication and education is key to making the CICA solution viable and successful. The goal of the workshops is to engage attendees in a hands-on lab to create CICA constructs, thereby empowering them to use CICA in their respective standards development work."

Expert instructors have designed the workshop to be industry neutral. Attendees are trained in the basic elements of CICA and learn how to build a CICA template from start to finish, map new and existing business processes into CICA and create Modules for CICA templates. The workshop also provides a venue for mentoring sessions after participants feel they have a firm understanding of the CICA development process and methodology.

Attendees not only learn the basic principles of CICA, but receive a better understanding of how their organization can rapidly gain business advantage with this exciting concept by reducing costs. While EDI has been the engine of significant e-business growth, its proprietary software, cryptic format and implementation complexities are all impediments to a rapid return on investment. CICA's syntax-neutral, architectural framework serves as the foundation that protects our investment in business content development by creating a reusable common structure that can be expressed in a variety of syntaxes, for example, XML scheme, industry specific implementation guides, ASC X12 EDI transaction sets or future markup languages. CICA will make e-business more agile, while reducing costs and protecting the investment. This next-generation architecture produces discrete modular messages, thus, they are inherently more flexible and more adaptable to a wide variety of messaging needs.

The next two CICA workshops are scheduled for June 5-6, 2004 in Chicago, IL and October, 2004 in Miami, FL (to be held in conjunction with the October ASC X12 Trimester meeting). The next ASC X12 Trimester meeting will be held June 6-11in Chicago, IL. To register for the workshops and/or the Trimester meeting, visit www.X12.org or call [phone].

About the Accredited Standards Committee X12

The Accredited Standards Committee X12, accredited by the American National Standards Institute and comprised of cross-industry representation, develops robust e-business exchange standards in X12 electronic data interchange (EDI) and XML formats that interact with a multitude of e-business technologies and serve as a premier tool for integrating electronic applications. Through standards-setting and active participation in emerging and technically relevant initiatives, ASC X12 facilitates the effective exchange of electronic information. Propelling global e-business, ASC X12 is an active contributor to the United Nations/Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport (UN/EDIFACT), an international standard relating to the exchange of good and services. To learn more about ASC X12, visit www.X12.org or call 703-970-4480.