Re: Proposed Charter for OASIS SET TC

["Eckenfels. Bernd" <B.Eckenfels@seeburger.de>]

Hello,

I want to comment on the Scope of the SET TC Charter in regards to the
close/strict relationship with Core Components. I think the major semantic
modelling work and a framework to describe that is quite independend from
the actual data representation. A "SET Process and Semantic Model" would be
easyly applicable to legacy formants, EDI or Inhouse. 

I therefore would propose to add this as a secondaryx goal, or to weaken the
focus, to allow the TC to determine if they only want to support CCs or not.

And as I minor point, if using skype: will it be possible to dial in by
landlines? Maybe something like talkshoe.com instead if we dont find a telco
sponsor?

Greetings
Bernd



-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Mary McRae [mailto:marypmcrae@gmail.com] Im Auftrag von Mary McRae
Gesendet: Montag, 12. Mai 2008 16:39
An: members@lists.oasis-open.org; tc-announce@lists.oasis-open.org
Cc: oasis-charter-discuss@lists.oasis-open.org
Betreff: [members] Proposed Charter for OASIS SET TC

To OASIS Members:

  A draft TC charter has been submitted to establish the OASIS Semantic
Support for Electronic Business Document Interoperability (SET) Technical
Committee. In accordance with the OASIS TC Process Policy section 2.2: 
(http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/process-2008-02-05.php#formation) the
proposed charter is hereby submitted for comment. The comment period shall
remain open until 11:45 pm ET on 26 May 2008. 

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  We encourage member comment and ask that you note the name of the proposed
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(SET) in the subject line of your email message. 

Regards,

Mary
 
---------------------------------------------------
Mary P McRae
Manager of TC Administration, OASIS
email: mary.mcrae@oasis-open.org
web: www.oasis-open.org
phone: 603.232.9090
 

===========
PROPOSED CHARTER FOR REVIEW AND COMMENT

a. Name of the TC
OASIS Semantic Support for Electronic Business Document Interoperability
(SET) Technical Committee

b. Statement of purpose
No document standard is sufficient for all purposes because the requirements
significantly differ amongst businesses, industries and geo-political
regions.
On the other hand, the ultimate aim of business document interoperability is
to exchange business data among partners without any prior agreements
related to the document syntax and semantics. Therefore, an important
characteristic of a document standard is its ability to adapt to different
contexts, its extensibility and customization. 
UN/CEFACT Core Component Technical Specification (CCTS) is an important
landmark in this direction. UN/CEFACT CCTS provides a methodology to
identify a set of reusable building blocks, called Core Components to create
electronic documents.
Core Components represent the common data elements of everyday business
documents such as "Address", "Amount", or "Line Item". These reusable
building blocks are then assembled into business documents such as "Order"
or "Invoice"
by using the CCTS methodology. Core components are defined to be
context-independent so that they can later be restricted to different
contexts.
Many core components defined by UN/CEFACT are available to users from
UN/CEFACT Core Component Library.

CCTS is gaining widespread adoption by both the horizontal and the vertical
standard groups. Universal Business Language (UBL) was the first
implementation of the CCTS methodology. Some earlier horizontal standards
such as Global Standard One (GS1) XML and Open Applications Group
Integration Specification (OAGIS), and some vertical industry standards such
as CIDX and RosettaNet have also taken up CCTS. 

The OASIS SET TC aims to specify semantic mechanisms to achieve
interoperability among document standards based of UN/CEFACT CCTS used in
B2B, B2G and G2G applications by continuing work initiated by the iSURF
Project
(http://www.iSURFProject.eu) in three respects:

i.	Semantic Support for Context Domains
	Core component based document schema customization allows the
modification of standard components in response to contextual needs. Schemas
can be extended by adding new components or can be restricted by removing
components or by limiting cardinality of components to a subset. Eight
context categories have also been introduced. When a document schema needs
to be customized for a context, users need to manually discover or provide
component versions applicable to that particular context.

	The OASIS SET TC aims to specify semantic support mechanisms to
provide machine processable semantic representations for the context domains
to annotate core components to facilitate their discovery and reuse. This
semantic will be obtained from the taxonomies and code lists already in use
in the industry. This will allow the development of automated processes that
intelligently search through custom components by interpreting
class-subclass, equivalence and other relationships specified in context
ontologies and gather applicable versions of components.

ii.	Semantic Support for Customization of Core Components and Business
Document Schemas
Core component based business document schemas are composed of several basic
and aggregate components. Aggregate components themselves are collections of
other basic and aggregate components in a recursive manner. Many aggregate
components in this hierarchy are included by other components and document
schemas themselves. So customizing an intermediate component for a context
implicitly customizes all document schemas including that component for the
same context.

In order to customize a document schema for a particular business context,
it is necessary to traverse the component hierarchy of the schema and gather
applicable custom versions. Furthermore, a business context value may
consist of values from multiple context categories. Semantic support will be
provided for this purpose by using context ontologies. 

The ability to automate schema customization will lead to a significant new
flexibility, that is, it becomes possible to merge multiple versions of a
component to generate additional versions of that particular component. This
greatly simplifies the component customization effort as it is no longer
necessary to manually provide customized components for every single
business context. Instead, it is sufficient to customize components for
individual context categories since combinations for multiple categories can
be automatically generated as needed. When a target context value includes
multiple categories or has multiple parents or a mixture of both, component
repository may contain multiple applicable versions of a particular
component. For such cases, the derivation rules from individual versions
will be automatically serialized by successively applying them to the
corresponding document component.

iii.	Semantic Support for Document Translation
OASIS SET TC will provide a machine processable mechanism that can express
the structure and the semantics of components together with their
correspondences in different versions. In this way, it will become possible
to develop tools to help with semantic translation of Core component based
electronic business documents. For this purpose, first a UBL "Component
Ontology" will be developed.


In the later phases, this ontology will be expanded to cover other document
standards based on CCTS.
 The Component Ontology serves two major purposes:

.	Representing the semantics of components: Document customization
takes
place at the level of individual types and elements; hence, translation
needs to be done at the same level. When an automated process compares two
versions of a schema, it needs to be able to identify corresponding elements
in these schemas.
When document elements are represented as classes of a common component
ontology, it becomes possible to utilize that ontology for the computation
of similarities between elements from different schemas.

.	Representing the structure of document schemas: Core component based
document schemas are complex hierarchies including numerous types and
elements any of which might be modified through customization. Even in the
case of semantically equivalent components, comparison is a complicated task
unless supported by proper tools. By representing the structural layout of
types and elements using classes from common component ontology, it becomes
possible to utilize semantic reasoners for the comparison of these complex
hierarchies.

c. Scope
CCTS is gaining widespread adoption by both the horizontal and the vertical
standard groups. Universal Business Language (UBL) was the first
implementation of the CCTS methodology. Some earlier horizontal standards
such as  Global Standard One (GS1) XML and Open Applications Group
Integration Specification (OAGIS), and some vertical industry standards such
as CIDX and RosettaNet have also taken up CCTS. However, all these standards
apply CCTS differently as detailed in:
- Kabak Y., Dogac A., "A Survey and Analysis of Electronic Business Document
Standards", http://www.srdc.metu.edu.tr/webpage/publications 

The SET TC will assess the existing CCTS based document standards to define
and implement semantic support for interoperability among them starting with
different customization of UBL document schemas and will provide tool
support and a testbed for testing interoperability. 

d. Deliverables
OASIS SET TC will develop three Technical Specifications described below,
and also may elect to issue Technical Reports and White Papers:

.	Specification of semantic support mechanisms to provide machine
processable semantic representations for the context domains to annotate
core components to facilitate their discovery and reuse -- final version
available in December 2008 (the TC may issue intermediate versions as
frequently as every 6
months)

.	Specification of Semantic Support for Customization of Core
Components
and Business Document Schemas in June 2009 (intermediate versions may be
available as frequently as every 6 months)

.	Specification of machine processable mechanism that can express the
structure and the semantics of components together with their
correspondences in different versions

.	Technical Reports will be drafted as appropriate

.	White Papers as appropriate

e. IPR Mode
SET TC will operate under "RF on Limited Terms" mode.

f. Anticipated audience
The anticipated audience for this work includes members of the Ontolog
Forum, OASIS ebXML Registry TC, OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL) TC,
non-OASIS Business and Government Document standards groups, the related
units of NIST, programmers, vendors and users. The work should be of
interest to anyone involved with Electronic Business Documents.

g. Language.
English. The TC may elect to form subcommittees that produce localized
documentation of the TC's work in additional languages.

(2) Non-normative information:
(2)(a) Identification of similar or applicable work that is being done in
other OASIS TCs or by other organizations, why there is a need for another
effort in this area and how this proposed TC will be different, and what
level of liaison will be pursued with these other organizations.

.	UN/CEFACT CCTS provides the basis of the work proposed. The work
proposed in the SET TC complements the CCTS approach through semantic
mechanisms. The SET TC will try to establish a liaison with UN/CEFACT.

.	OASIS UBL TC: This is the most related standard since it is the
first
XML implementation of UN/CEFACT CTTS. The SET TC will complement this
standard by providing the semantic discovery, reuse, customization and
translation of CTTS based documents. UBL TC co-chair, Tim McGrath is a
founding member of the SET TC.

.	OASIS ebXML Registry TC: The semantic annotation and discovery of
the
document components will be achieved through the ebXML Registry. The SET TC
founding member, Asuman Dogac has already provided an OASIS ebXML Registry
Technical Committee  approved Committee Draft: 

o	Dogac A., "ebXML Registry Profile for Web Ontology Language (OWL)",
OASIS ebXML Registry Technical Committee approved Committee Draft.

Further liaison will be established with the ebXML Registry related with how
to store and annotate core components as the work progresses.

OASIS SEE TC: The SEE TC concentrates on providing a semantic environment
for the execution of Web services. The SET TC, on the other hand, will
concentrate on the document interoperability of electronic business
documents which use UN/CEFACT CCTS. Further liaison will be sought with the
SEE TC for transporting documents using Web services in a SoA architecture.

 (2)(b) The date, time, and location of the first meeting, whether it will
be held in person or by telephone, and who will sponsor this first meeting.
The first meeting of a TC shall occur no less than 30 days after the
announcement of its formation in the case of a meeting held exclusively by
telephone or other electronic means, and no less than 45 days after the
announcement of its formation in the case of a meeting held face-to-face
(whether or not a telephone bridge is also available).

July 10, 2008, 14:00 GMT / 10:00 AM ET using Skype

(2)(c) The projected on-going meeting schedule for the year following the
formation of the TC, or until the projected date of the final deliverable,
whichever comes first, and who will be expected to sponsor these meetings.
Meeting Schedule: Monthly teleconferences using Skype. 

(2)(d) The names, electronic mail addresses, and membership affiliations of
at least Minimum Membership who support this proposal and are committed to
the Charter and projected meeting schedule.

Asuman Dogac, Asuman@srdc.metu.edu.tr, Middle East Technical University
(METU) Tim McGrath, tim.mcgrath@documentengineeringservices.com, Document
Engineering Services Stephen D. Green, Stephen.green@systml.co.uk, Associate
Yildiray Kabak, yildiray@srdc.metu.edu.tr, Middle East Technical University
(METU)
Mustafa Yuksel, mustafa@srdc.metu.edu.tr, Middle East Technical University
(METU)

(2)(e) The name of the Convener who must be an Eligible Person.
Asuman Dogac will be the convenor.

(2)(f) The name of the Member Section with which the TC intends to
affiliate, if any.
The TC is not planning to affiliate with a Member Section at this time.

(2)(g) Optionally, a list of contributions of existing technical work that
the proposers anticipate will be made to this TC.

1.	Yarimagan Y., Dogac A., "Semantics Based Customization of UBL
Document
Schemas", Journal of Distributed and Parallel Databases, Springer-Verlag,
Volume 22, Numbers 2-3 / December 2007, pp. 107-131.
2.	Yarimagan Y., Dogac A., "A Semantic based Solution for the
Interoperability of UBL Schemas", IEEE Internet Computing, to appear.
3.	Yarimagan Y., "Semantic Enrichment for the Automated Customization
and
Interoperability of UBL Schemas", PhD Thesis, Dept. of Computer Eng., Middle
East Technical University, March 2008.
4.	Kabak Y., Dogac A., "A Survey and Analysis of Electronic Business
Document Standards", Submitted for publication.
References 1, 2 and 4 are available from:
http://www.srdc.metu.edu.tr/publications
Reference 3 will be available from the TC home page.

(2)(h) Optionally, a draft Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document
regarding the planned scope of the TC, for posting on the TC's website.
Will be provided later.

(2)(i) Optionally, a proposed working title and acronym for the
specification(s) to be developed by the TC.
Will be provided later.



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