Re: [ubl-dev] looking for practical examples

["G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com>]

At 2009-02-14 01:16 +0100, Alexander Whillas wrote:
>2009/2/13 Fulton Wilcox <fulton.wilcox@coltsnecksolutions.com>:
>
> > As to whether standards can keep up with requirements, for most users they
> > are far ahead.
>
>If this is the case, why do I have to invent an Inventory document,
>and its looking more like I have to.

A dearth of volunteer help on the committees.

>There is another option that XML opens up and that is XSLTs to convert
>one format into another. If I go with UBL, I have to:
>
>1. Comprehend the 1500+ elements of UBL

Mitigated by customization and tools like ours that create subset 
schemas and subset documentation (which hides those constructs not 
used for a given document type).

>2. Create XSD for the Inventory document

That's the easy part as it is the top-level constructs only ... the 
hard part is deciding what goes into the inventory document.

>3. Implement

Hopefully straightforward but your mileage may vary.

>Where as if I create an ad-hoc XML inventory document I eliminate step
>1 and speed up step 2 and in future if I need to interface with UBL
>systems I (or who ever) writes an XSL Transformation.

But if your ad-hoc document based on UBL business objects, that 
transformation will be a lot easier and a lot less lossy.

>Can you see how step 1 here is a disincentive to the developer with a
>limited time/budget?

But that is just a lack of awareness of available resources.  Open up 
the catalogue report in Crane's collection of reports and unused 
elements are removed from the reports.  If you used our tools to 
specify subsets of the existing business objects, the reports would 
get shorter still.

> > In particular, many well-functioning inventory systems become
> > chronic problems because they were not "future-proofed" for success. For
> > example, the requirements spec did not even address multi-currency, the
> > system was hard-coded to the spec, but suddenly a requirement emerges to do
> > business in Canada or China.
>
>Actually, how does UBL handle multi-currency pricing? I was looking at
>Catalogue and the only mention of pricing is in
>
>Catalogue
>     CalalogueLine
>         Item
>             RequiredItemLocationQuantity?!?
>                 Price
>
>Is there an attribute here somewhere that defines currency?

PriceAmount is derived from the core component type "Amount" which 
has currencyID= as an attribute.

I hope this helps.

. . . . . . . . . . . Ken

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