New Discussion Group - Referencing External Schemes

[Len Gallagher <LGallagher@nist.gov>]

OASIS/ebXML Registry members,

At a previous Registry teleconference meeting, Lisa announced that she was 
going to set up a discussion group on the topic of referencing nodes of 
classification schemes that exist but are external to the local Registry. 
She named me to lead the discussion because I was the one who raised the 
issue by submitting a proposal last June to change the way classifications 
are handled in our model.

   http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/regrep/200106/msg00018.html

My proposal was not acted upon. Instead a new issue was created "Using 
non-local classification schemes". A ballot of the group in mid-July 
resulted in that issue being given high priority.

   http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/regrep/200107/msg00044.html

Lisa has since set up a new OASIS email discussion list for that issue. To 
subscribe to the private discussion list, OASIS members should send an 
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   regrep-ex-scheme-request@lists.oasis-open.org

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I think this message will be the first one on that list.

My intent is to approach this topic from a requirements point of view 
before discussing any specific solutions. We will assume that a person 
wants to classify an existing "repository item" that has a RegistryEntry 
instance in a local Registry by an "external" classification scheme.  The 
person will have to somehow reference the external classification scheme 
and a specific node (or path of nodes) from that classification scheme.

One required pre-requisite is that we will limit discussion to 
classification schemes as defined in the OASIS/ebXML specifications, i.e. 
"hierarchical" schemes. We will not broaden the discussion to more general 
interpretations of "classifications" that might include "topic maps", 
"semantic nets", "ontologies", etc.

The example "external" classification schemes will include at least the 
following:

   UNSPSC        http://eccma.org/unspsc/browse/

   NAICS         http://www.census.gov/epcd/naics/naicscod.txt

   LivingThings  A distributed classification scheme with 7 named levels
                 with different pieces under the control of different 
organizations

   ManyOthers    http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/classification.html

and likely others that I or other discussion participants will create. 
We'll want our example set to include some dynamic schemes that may change 
often, thus making it impractical to copy those schemes into our local 
Registry, as well as schemes that are owned by another group who refuses 
(for whatever reason) to let us copy the scheme into our Registry. We'll 
want to include schemes that are owned and registered by some other 
OASIS/ebXML conformant Registry as well as schemes that are owned and 
controlled by registries not necessarily conformant to OASIS/ebXML 
specifications, e.g. existing "library" classification schemes.

This group has no teleconferences set up yet. I'll see what kind of issues 
we have before setting up the first teleconference. And I'll make sure that 
the first teleconference meeting gets advertised to this entire "regrep" 
email list.

Regards,
Len Gallagher


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Len Gallagher                             LGallagher@nist.gov
NIST                                      Work: 301-975-3251
Bldg 820  Room 562                        Home: 301-424-1928
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8970 USA           Fax: 301-948-6213
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