Semi E128

SEMI E128 defines the generic structural rules for XML-based messages exchanged between equipment and host in semiconductor manufacturing — envelope structure, header/body separation, error-reporting fields, and request/response correlation patterns that any XML-based SEMI messaging standard reuses, distinct from E121's naming-and-namespace style guide for XML documents in general. E121 fixes how element names, namespaces, and versioning should look across SEMI's XML-based standards; E128 goes one layer further and fixes the structural shape of an actual message exchange — what a request looks like, what a response looks like, how an error gets reported inside that exchange — so a standard defining a new XML-based interaction doesn't have to invent its own envelope and correlation pattern from scratch.

A new SEMI standard needs to define an XML-based request/response exchange

Not just document naming style, but message shape itself

SEMI E128 — generic XML message structureEnvelope, header/body, error fields, request/response correlation

Standard envelope and header/body separation

Every XML-based SEMI message follows the same shape

Common error-reporting fields and correlation IDs

Requests and their responses are unambiguously linked

New standards reuse E128's message shape instead of inventing one

A host that's integrated one E128-based exchange recognizes the pattern in any other

The reason E128 needed to exist on top of E121 is that document style and message structure are two different levels of consistency — E121 ensures that if you look inside any SEMI XML document, the element names and namespaces feel familiar, but it says nothing about how a request pairs with its response, how an error gets surfaced mid-exchange, or how a host correlates an asynchronous reply back to the call that triggered it, all of which are message-level, not document-level, concerns. E128 is what keeps every XML-based SEMI interaction — EqSD retrieval, CEM delivery, or any future standard built the same way — following the same request/response/error/correlation shape, so a developer who has integrated one E128-structured exchange already understands the skeleton of every other one, and only has to learn the specific payload content each new standard adds inside that shared shape.

E128 and E121 together are what let the growing family of XML-based SEMI standards stay coherent at both levels at once — E121 so the vocabulary inside any document looks familiar, and E128 so the shape of the exchange carrying that document follows one shared request/response/error pattern, instead of every new standard reinventing both independently.

Semi E128

Take SEMI E128 further