Business Interoperability Interfaces
for Public procurement
in Europe

Codelists

Genericode is an OASIS standard intended for defining code lists. Code lists or enumerations are an important aspect to provide semantic meaning to data elements. Code lists use to be handled through enumerations in XSD Schemas, but this is not flexible because a change in a code list value enforced a change in the XSD Schema version. Code lists tend to change more often than data structures, so it seems better to keep them separated.

Genericode is the first initiative to define a standard model to represent code lists as XML instances, thus avoiding the need to define them tightly coupled with the xml data structure. Genericode provides:

• A standard model and XML representation for the contents of a code list
• A standard model and XML representation for data associated with items in a code list
• A standard model and XML representation for how new code lists are derived from existing code lists

Genericode has been adopted by different XML vocabularies such as UBL or FpML, and as a unique solution to manage code lists that is gaining interest in other different standardization bodies.

CEN BII has defined a set of code lists using tables that are mapped to Genericode files.

Genericode Files

• Account Type Code
• Address Format Code
• Allowance Charge Reason Code
• Binary Object Mime Code
• Country Identification Code
• Country Subentity Code
• Currency Code
• Channel Code
• Delivery Terms ID
• Discrepancy Response Code
• Document Type Code
• Invoice Type Code
• Parent Document Type Code
• Payment Channel Code
• Payment Means Code
• Response Code
• Status Code
• Tax Category ID
• Tax Exemption Reason Code
• Tax Scheme ID
• Tax Type Code
• Unit Of Measure Code