Re: [ubl-dev] UBL Extensions

[stephen.green@systml.co.uk]

see below

-- 
Stephen D. Green

Partner
SystML, http://www.systml.co.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 117 9541606

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+22:37 .. and voice



Quoting Miguel Pérez E <mape1082@hotmail.com>:

> Hi All,
>
>
> We are currently evaluating UBL to possibly adopt it into our next   
> generation of business tools. We are facing a problem consisting   
> mainly of the following:
>
> The standard does not cover all the possible data fields/structures   
> we need to deal with. We basically need to map from EDI X.12   
> messages to UBL and viceversa. The EDI is, as you know, really wide   
> and is many times customized to the own purposes of who transmits.
>
> Example:
> A shipment may have many different associated dates: Ship Date,   
> Deliver Date, Do not Deliver After, Do not ship after, Do not ship   
> before, Do not deliver before,  Expiration date for foods etc.. We   
> found at least 20 different DateTime qualifiers that may have us map  
>  the DTM valua to a corresponding field in the UBL schema. It  
> happens  that the UBL does not contemplate all of those fields. In  
> this case  we would be forced to extend the standard to our own  
> purposes.
>
> So, my questions are at this point:
>
> 1. Can you provide an example of how to extend a UBL Purchase Order   
> with a date of expiration for an item that is food?
>

I customized the Despatch Advice to create a 'Despatch Request' recently

http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl-dev/200802/msg00076.html

What you might need may be along similar lines. Here though the goal
was a schema for internal use only. When exchanging schemas there may
be more reason to avoid customizing altogether and, as with EDI, to make
use of Notes, etc. Not that this is recommended of course :-)

Using the Extension might be best only as a last resort. You would have
to event a way to link in with lines in the Order. Writing an Extension
is just up to you. You might want, say to reuse UBL types for it but
it might depend what your customers want in terms of who they can trade
with if they use your product. They probably don't want to be limited
to just others using the same product. So maybe a neutral party should
be asked to create (and maybe host) the schemas. Perhaps there is a
suitable standards or industry or consortium organisation suited for it.

Anyway, simplest is possibly best (simplest which works that is). For
item dates you might just want a new Item type based on the UBL one but
with a qualifier added to the front of the name Item (abc:XyzItem that is).
See the way I've created an extended DespatchRequestLine here

http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl-dev/200802/zip00003.zip

I just created a new type by combining the original type (in your case
Item) with the type you want to add (in this case a type which itself
reuses but qualifies the nearest UBL date type).


> 2. Is there a guide to map common EDI documents to their   
> corresponding UBL documents?
>

This is topical at the moment - now would be a good time for
a joint effort to do this mapping as there would be an opportunity
(I think this was mentioned in recent UBL minutes) to provide any
feedback on proposed new types in time for UBL 2.1 modelling.
I was involved with mapping just the invoice to EDIFACT, CIDX, etc
through CEN/ISSS EEG1 e-invoice project a few years ago which got
fed back into UBL 1.0 so I know the process works and the potential
is there. Of course if X12 like UBL has CCTS Core Component mapping
(I don't know X12, sorry) then mapping at this level would be cool
too. I'd like to see how CCs help in practice with interoperability.

> 3. Can you provide an small example of code list extension?

You could use genericode to distribute codelists but just handcrafting
a Schematron file like those in the UBL 2.0 package is an alternative
to generating from genericode files.

You should find help in this package
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/document.php?document_id=22328

See also G. Ken Holman's announcement
http://eccnet.eccnet.com/pipermail/schematron-love-in/2007-February/000528.html
since you probably need Ken's Schematron skeleton which makes a minor
correction to the ISO skeleton.


>
>
> Thanks a lot for your help,
>
>
> Miguel
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