Acord Pcs XML Ifx Deviations

ACORD XML BUSINESS MESSAGE SPECIFICATION FOR P&C INSURANCE AND SURETY VERSION 1.0.0 DEVIATIONS FROM IFX 1.0.1 07/31/2001

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© 2000 – 2001 ACORD CORPORATION ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Table of Contents 1

INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................................................1

1.1 GOVERNING PRINCIPLES...............................................................................................................................................1 2 DEFINITION OF TERMS.............. .............. .............. .............. .............. ............... .............. .............. .............. ...... ....1 3 DATA TYPE DEFINITIONS....................... .............. .............. .............. ............... .............. .............. .............. ........... 1 4 DOCUMENTATION AND NAMING CONVENTIONS..................... .............. .............. ............... ............ .............2 5 FRAMEWORK SPECIFICATION.............. .............. .............. .............. ............... .............. .............. .............. ......... .2

5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6

I NTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................................................2 FRAMEWORK .............................................................................................................................................................3 COMMON FRAMEWORK AGGREGATES .............................................................................................................................3 ACORD DOCUMENT.................................................................................................................................................3 AUTHENTICATION.......................................................................................................................................................4 SERVICE WRAPPERS ....................................................................................................................................................4

6 TRANSPORT AND PACKAGING SPECIFICATION................. .............. .............. .............. .............. ............... ....4 7 XML FORMAT SPECIFICATION............. .............. .............. ............... .............. .............. .............. ...... ...... ...... ...... 4

© 2000 – 2001 ACORD CORPORATION ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ACORD XML BUSINESS MESSAGE SPECIFICATION FOR P&C INSURANCE AND SURETY IDEVIATIONS FROM IFX 1.0.1

1

VERSION 1.0.0

INTRODUCTION

The ACORD Business Message Specification for Property & Casualty and Surety is based on the Interactive Financial Exchange (IFX) Business Message Specification v 1.0.1 as a result of a cooperative relationship between ACORD and IFX Forum ( www.ifxforum.org). Most of the business message structure, data types, and documentation conventions were borrowed from the IFX Specification. In some areas, ACORD has adopted the exact IFX semantics and in other areas has enhanced it based on the needs of the Insurance Industry. The purpose of this document is to specify the areas where ACORD has deviated from the borrowed IFX materials (mainly the IFX Framework). Only the sections specifically borrowed from IFX are mentioned in this document. The sections that describe the ACORD Business messages and code lists are unique to ACORD and do not contain IFX copyrighted material.

1.1

Governing Principles

ACORD borrowed and followed all of the governing principles listed in this section. Although the use of XML attributes was avoided, it was decided that leveraging them for transient identifier and identifier referencing was valid. The relevant guiding principle was extended to reflect the deviation.

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DEFINITION OF TERMS

Many of the definitions of terms in this section were borrowed from the IFX specification while others were added. Of those definitions borrowed from IFX, none deviated from the IFX definition. Items added that represent extensions to IFX are:

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Attachment

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Business Message (Submit)

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Entity

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Framework

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Transaction

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Transport

DATA TYPE DEFINITIONS

In this section, ACORD documents several data types borrowed from IFX exactly as they appear in the IFX specification. Additionally, ACORD documents three new types and modifies three existing types. 1 © 2000 – 2001 ACORD CORPORATION ALL RIGHTS RESERVED


VERSION 1.0.0

The modified types are: •

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Boolean – The Boolean type is the same in ACORD as IFX except that a sentence was added to the ACORD definition stating that an optional element of type Boolean is implied to be not answered if it is absent. In IFX, Boolean types default to False if absent. Currency – Moved to the Entity section of the specification. The content of the currency structure was changed and a aggregate was added that can be referenced from any element of type Currency. Enum - A requirement to identify the owner of a particular code list lead to the creation of a aggregate containing relevant code list owner information that can be referenced from any element of type Enum.

The new types are:

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Transient Unique Identifiers - The ACORD definition of the ID concept

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Identifier Reference – The ACORD definition of the IDREF concept

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Multiple Identifier References - The ACORD definition of the IDREFS concept

DOCUMENTATION AND NAMING CONVENTIONS

Each section in this chapter we borrowed from the IFX exactly as they appear in the IFX Specification with the following exceptions: •

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In the section on Naming Rules ACORD specifies the naming convention of a business message to be LOB, Object, Property, Method, Direction order; e.g., . ACORD specifies an underscore as a prefix delimiter for custom elements as opposed to the IFX use of the colon.

FRAMEWORK SPECIFICATION

5.1

Introduction

The ACORD Framework specification is the recommended method for sending and receiving ACORD business messages. It is based on the Interactive Financial Exchange (IFX) specification developed and managed by IFX Forum (www.ifxforum.org). In some areas, ACORD has adopted the exact IFX semantics and in other areas has enhanced it based on the needs of the Insurance Industry. •

ACORD borrowed the same organization (Document, Authentication, Service) but does not consider business messages part of the Framework rather a set of messages that can me utilized in any Framework.

2 © 2000 – 2001 ACORD CORPORATION ALL RIGHTS RESERVED


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5.2

VERSION 1.0.0

ACORD uses the term Transaction to describe a Request/Response pair where IFX avoids the use of that term. ACORD considers the Base Service part of the Framework while the other services are not. ACORD naming conventions required that all Enum types end with “Cd’ (Code) so several IFX Framework tag names were renamed.

Framework

In this section, the entire IFX framework for Property and Casualty Insurance and Surety is defined by ACORD using a different documentation style by using Entities in a manor consistent with the ACORD DTD. The overall structure of the IFX Framework is the same with several ACORD extensions: •

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A element was added to the (root) document aggregate for the purpose of allowing a client to request suppression of asynchronous response notifications which the server may send as aggregates. A minimal Base Service was added that serves the same purpose as the IFX Base Service but omits most of the Customer messages. The IFX Service Profile messages are included here along with ACORD-Defined messages for requesting pending responses called and . An Extensions Service was added for the purpose of allowing Insurers to define unique extensions and rules in-band in order to influence the behavior of client applications. An Insurance Service was added containing Property and Casualty messages for Personal, Small Commercial, and Large Commercial Lines of Business.

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A Surety Service was added containing messages for Bond Requests and Report of Execution.

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The IFX Signon messages were included but the option was omitted.

5.3

Common Framework Aggregates

This section was added to define aggregates that are used throughout the Framework. The following deviations from IFX are noted: •

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5.4

The aggregate is an ACORD-specific aggregate used in asynchronous response processing. The aggregate is only used in the Framework for Error conditions and the element was removed. A new aggregate was defined for reporting statuses on various conditions at the message level.

ACORD Document

ACORD borrowed the Document concept from IFX but modified the content model and decided to name the root tag .



5.5

VERSION 1.0.0

Authentication

ACORD borrowed the entire Authentication process from IFX and only modified it slightly: •

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5.6

An optional element was borrowed from IFX 1.1.0 and added to the end of the aggregate. and were changed to and .

Service Wrappers

IFX Service Wrappers are used by ACORD exactly as they are defined in the IFX Specification. Since the Base Service is considered part of the Framework, the IFX Service Profile messages and aggregates for each ACORD-Defined Service are found in this section. •

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The aggregates defined in the and messages are borrowed from IFX but minimized to only provide information for the function in the IFX Specification. The and messages for asynchronous processing are defined in this section.

TRANSPORT AND PACKAGING SPECIFICATION

This section was written by ACORD with very little influence from the IFX specification. No content was borrowed from IFX. •

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ACORD makes use of multipart-MIME to send binary data outside of the XML Stream whereas IFX defines a Binary data type for use inside the XML stream.

XML FORMAT SPECIFICATION

ACORD borrowed a few items form the IFX specification and modified them slightly. •

The IFX Processing Instruction was changed to the ACORD processing instruction but the content remains the same

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ACORD uses a different Document Type Declaration

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ACORD does not make use of XML namespaces in the same way as IFX.

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ACORD defines a limited use of attributes

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ACORD defines XPATH usage in support of the Extensions Service

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ACORD borrowed the File-Based Error Recovery section as is from the IFX Specification.


Acord Pcs XML Ifx Deviations

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