Party Id appendix

["Dale Moberg" <dmoberg@us.axway.com>]

A.1 Party Identifier Domains

 

Industries and groups have created their own naming schemes to suit their own purposes.  For example, Dun & Bradstreet assigns company IDs (DUNS) to all incorporated business entities.  The National Motor Freight Traffic Association (NMFTA) assigns Standard Carrier Alpha Codes (SCAC) to common carriers used to report tariffs and other regulatory information. The Uniform Code Council (UCC) assigns UCS Communication IDs to their members in the grocery and retail industry.   The U.S. Federal Government assigns a Federal Employer Identifier Numbers (FEIN), or Tax ID (TIN), to each employer. S.W.I.F.T. assigns the ISO 9362 Bank Identifier Code (BIC), a universal identifier for financial institutions throughout the world. Each bank in the U.S. has a Transit Routing Number assigned by the American Bankers Association (ABA). The Japan Information Processing Development Corporation (JIPDEC) Electronic Commerce Promotion Center (ECPC) assigns IDs (Standard Company Code) to business entities which have requested to register their company codes in Japan. There are many different codes to identify secondary and post-secondary educational institutions.

 

Most entities have at least one ID from multiple domains - e.g., almost all U.S. corporations almost certainly have both at least one DUNS and a FEIN (or TIN).  Insurance companies not only are identified by at least one DUNS and a TIN, but also by NAIC company codes (administered by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners). Many entities even have more than one ID from the same domain - it's easy to have multiple DUNS numbers due to mergers or acquisitions.

 

Concrete examples will illustrate Party ID Domains and Identifiers. Roadway Express in Akron, Ohio is identified by the NMFTA SCAC RDWY in addition to the DUNS 006998397.  These are unambiguous identifiers.  The NMFTA is the Registration Authority (RA) for the SCAC domain, and guarantees that Roadway's SCAC is different from all other motor carrier SCACs. Likewise, Dun & Bradstreet (the RA for the DUNS domain) guarantees the uniqueness of DUNS numbers. Entities not usually thought of as businesses often have unique identifiers suitable for their purposes: the University of Texas at Austin is identified as 003658 by the Federal Interagency Commission on Education (though UT also has one or more DUNS and FEINs, also).

 

The domain chosen to identify another entity often depends on the purpose.  For example, in the context of electronic payments, depository financial institutions (e.g., banks) will be identified by ABA Routing Numbers, as these are exclusively used in the ACH funds transfer environment.  In the context of procurement, a bank would probably be identified by its DUNS. And when a bank identifies itself to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for the purposes of remitting Social Security (FICA) taxes, the Federal Employer ID (FEIN) would be used, just as any other (non-bank) employer would use it. 

 

A.2 Identifier Formats

 

The identifiers within a particular domain usually have a rigid format.  For example, DUNS numbers are always nine numeric digits composed byof a random 8 digit sequence assigned by Dun & Bradstreet and, with a final check digit. The NMFTA uses 4 alphabetic characters, often a mnemonic of the company name, to identify carriers.  The ABA routing code used to identify financial institutions is semi-intelligent: the first three digits signify the geographic location of the bank itself.

 

A.3 Domain Nomenclature

 

There already exist schemes for naming identifier domains. ISO 6523[ISO6523] enumerates

ICDs for many domains: the domain is identified by a four digit numeric sequence.  For example, the ISO 6523 ICD 0060 identifies the Dun & Bradstreet domain.

 

Alternatively, the code list for ISO 9735 (UN/EDIFACT syntax) D.E.Service simple data element 0007 (routing Identification Ccode qualifier) can be used to name identifier domains.

 

ANSI ASC X12[X12] Data Element I05 (Interchange ID Qualifier) element, used in the ISA Interchange Control Header segment, also provides a list of code values for naming domains.

 

These three serve as "catalogs" of schemes for naming identifier domains, and processes exists by which additional domains can be identified:  the British Standards Institute (BSI) is the RA for ISO 6523; the ISO/TC154-UN/CEFACT Joint Syntax Working Group(JSWG) for ISO 9735[ISO9735] D.E.Service simple data element 0007; and ANSI ASC X12 for X12 D.E. I05. 

 

A.4 Party ID URIs in ebXML CPPA [ebCPPA] and in ebXML Messaging [ebMS]

 

In both ebXML Messaging and ebXML CPPA, PartyId elements provide logical identifiers that may be used to logically identify the Party.

 

The value of the PartyId element is any non-empty string that provides an identifier. While an identifiers may be any identifier that is understood by both Parties to a CPA, in [ebMS] it is recommended that they be URIs.

 

Within [ebCPPA], the PartyId element has a single attribute,: type, that has a string value. It is recommended that the type value of the type attribute be a URN. If the type attribute is present, then it provides a scope or namespace for the content of the PartyId element.

 

Within [ebMS], if the type attribute is not present, the content of the PartyId element MUST be a URI that conforms to [RFC2396].

 

 It is RECOMMENDED that the value of the type attribute be a URN that defines a namespace for the value of the PartyId element. Typically, the URN would be registered in a well-known directory of organization identifiers.

 

Here are examples from [ebCPPA] that illustrate how URNs are used for the type attribute and for the PartyId elementvalue. 

 

  <tp:PartyId tp:type="urn:oasis:names:tc:ebxml-cppa:partyid-type:duns">123456789</tp:PartyId>

 

  <tp:PartyId>urn:icann:example.com</tp:PartyId>

 

The first example shows how to indicate the Party's DUNS number using a type attribute. Its value is a URN. The value of the PartyId element itself is the DUNS number of the organization, which is a string of digits assigned by the agency.

 

The second example shows an arbitrary URN as a PartyId value.  No type is indicated, but the value might be a URN that the Party has registered with IANA to identify itself directly.

 

 

A.5  Method to Generate Values for the “type” Attribute from Information Items in the [ISO6523] ICD List

 

While both [ebMS] and [ebCPPA] mention the idea that the URN for the PartyId/@type attribute would come from a well-known directory of organization identifiers,  no example is given  except in tp:type="urn:oasis:names:tc:ebxml-cppa:partyid-type:duns". The following method provides standardization for the URNs used as PartyId/@type values when using [ISO6523]. The example value for DUNS from the specification may, of course, be used but so may the standardized values found below. None of the rules,  requirements or recommendations of either [ebMS] or [ebCPPA] are modified by the standardization suggested below. It is recommended that implementers provide support, and be able to accommodate, the usage of the “type” values standardized by following the method next described.

 

1. If an abbreviated name is described in the item titled “Name of Coding System” within the ICD list, a “type” attribute can be constructed by prepending “urn:oasis:names:tc:ebxml-cppa:partyid-type:” to the abbreviated name and appending a colon “:” followed by the ICD value.

 

Example:

Using abbreviated name D-U-N-S Number:

Abbreviated Name: “D-U-N-S Number”

Upper-camel-case resultant string: “D-U-N-SNumber”

tp:type=" urn:oasis:names:tc:ebxml-cppa:partyid-type:D-U-N-SNumber:0060"

 

Note: “0060” is the ICD value of D-U-N-S Number. Also, the value

“urn:oasis:names:tc:ebxml-cppa:partyid-type:duns” remains a valid type attribute value for the PartyId element.

This value was specified previously in the version 2.0 CPPA specification.

 

2. Because an abbreviated name may be omitted from the ICD list, the “type” attribute can always contain the string derived from “Name of Coding System” expressed in upper-camel-case. A value can always be constructed by prepending “urn:oasis:names:tc:ebxml-cppa:partyid-type:” to the upper-camel-case name and appending a colon “:” followed by the ICD value.

 

Example:

Using formal name:

 

Name of Coding System(formal name): “Data Universal Numbering System”

Transformed Camel-case: “DataUniversalNumberingSystem”

 

tp:type=" urn:oasis:names:tc:ebxml-cppa:partyid-type:DataUniversalNumberingSystem:0060"

 

3. Punctuation marks in these formal names (such as, “/”, “-“ or “’” ) should be included unless they are not allowed in URNs  [RFC 2141]. If the punctuation characters are not allowed in URNs, then the hexadecimal escaping convention explained in [RFC 2141] should be followed for characters not allowed in URNs. However, spaces are not allowed in URNs and should be consumed during the production of an upper-camel-case string, rather than preserved in an escaped form. Words in names that are all upper-case should remain so when converted to an upper-camel-case string.