[regrep] V3 Work Item: Content Based Queries

[David RR Webber - XMLGlobal <Gnosis_@compuserve.com>]

Message text written by Farrukh Najmi
>
Lets get the ideas rolling!

<<<<

Farrukh,

Two related ideas that came up this week at the ebXML / eBTWG 
in Seattle.

The ebXML architecture stack has "Sets" of items - i.e. CPP / CPA / BPSS /
Assembly / Classification / Core Components.

We would want to create a Business Catalogue of these and have the
notion of a container (aka package) that can then have these
items "loaded" into it.

Now I know the current package mechanism is not for doing this
exactly, but maybe....

Also - the notion that in the RegisteredObject header we may want to add
a "Status" flag and some notion if the "set" is complete / incomplete /
unknown / nodependency.

For instance you may perform an integrity check on a container set and
find out some of the needed pieces are missing.

Clearly this opens up a forest of potential complexity.   I'm thinking
at the simplest level it would make sense to only include the status
flag - and not say what it is used for or what potential values are - 
just provide a means for implementors to store "state" of content,
and for the librarian to be able to then report / control on that.

Similarly we could extend the package notion in some way to
make it a known combination of 'things' rather than an arbitary
load set.

The advantage of this is that the human UI could prompt users
effectively to provide these pieces.  Of course the batch API
would not be able to provide that - but could accept complete
or incomplete updates to known "Sets"  of stuff.

I'm not saying we should do any of this!  Clearly the simpliest
response is "NO" - and then leave vendors to create report
programs that trawl thru the registry and flag items daily that 
have various apparent content issues...  Similarly for the 
batch submission of "sets" they can extend the model 
themselves with XML to state what a set contains and 
what to do if bits of it are missing.

OK - I'm just the messenger here!

Cheers, DW.

p.s. Thursday @ 4pm conflicts with me teaching Chess Club
         at the local school.  I guess you'll see more of me on the
         conference calls when schools out.