Additional questions and comments regarding AllowanceCharge

["Yukinori Saito" <y-saito@ecom.jp>]

Dear Tim McGrath,
I will appreciate if you would reply my additional questions and comments
regarding AllowanceCharge, that is explained my previous e-mail.
Best Regards,
Yukinori Saito

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Yukinori Saito" <y-saito@ecom.jp>
To: "Tim McGrath" <tmcgrath@portcomm.com.au>
Cc: <bill.meadows@sun.com>; <anne.hendry@sun.com>;
<jamie.clark@oasis-open.org>; <ksh@ccmail.sookmyung.ac.kr>;
<jason@kcals.or.kr>; "China) William Chan" <zb02@cnis.gov.cn>;
<kcyee@cecid.hku.hk>; <n.ito@ea-eca.org>; "Sun) Jon Bosak"
<jon.bosak@sun.com>; "BP-ATF" <BP-atf@ecom.jp>
Sent: Friday, February 13, 2004 1:43 PM
Subject: Re: UBL Pacific coordination call 9|10 February 2004


Dear Tim McGrath,

Thank you very much for your detailed reply.

We in ECOM's XML/EDI group has examined and studied what you said and UBL
specification.

1. Regarding BasePrice
We understood that the difference between the BasePrice under LineItem and
the BasePrice under Item.
We hope that this kind of definitions or guidance are explained in UBL
specifications.

2. Regarding AllowanceCharge
We understood that the meaning of AllowanceCharge is the allowance (that
reduce the amount) and Charges (that increase the amount). The
AllowanceCharge is not merely payment terms.

The followings are the additional questions and comments.
(1) Is the amount of AllowanceCharge the PaidAmount under Payment under
PaymentMeans?
(2) If yes, we think that the PaidAmount should be placed under
AllowanceCharge directly. We think the structure, that the PaidAmount is
located under PaymentMeans, is a little bit strange or difficult to
understand.
(3) We think that PaymentMeans should be independent to AllowanceCharge.
The PaymentMeans should be located under several amounts (e.g.
LineExtensionTotalAmount, LineExrtensionAmount, PriceAmount, PaidAmount)

3. Regarding the structure of our spreadsheet models of UBL documents
We wanted to research and examine UBL Order, firstly.
We have done some trials to map BIEs from the major business documents in
Japan to UBL Order.
The major business documents in Japan are ECALGA of JEITA, JEDICOS-XML of
distribution industry, and RosettaNet PIP3A4.
In these trials, we firstly have to understand whole structure and ASBIEs
and BBIEs of UBL Order. In order to understand UBL Order, we made a class
diagram and spreadsheet in one document.
As you know, UBL V1.0 specifications have many class diagrams and
spreadsheets by ASBIEs. We thought that these separated class diagrams and
spreadsheets are inconvenient to understand for us.
I understand that the two approaches are reasonable for each other. One is
UBL way, and the other one is our way. The UBL way is to define several
ASBIEs separately, and to reuse for several business documents. I think this
way is rational way for the management of standards.
However, in our major business documents specifications in Japan, each
business document has a spreadsheet that has full set of BIEs, and
additionally has the spreadsheet that has definitions of BIEs commonly used
by several business documents.

Best Regards,
Yukinori Saito
------------------------------------------------------
Yukinori Saito
Electronic Commerce Promotion Council of Japan (ECOM)
E-mail: y-saito@ecom.jp
Tel: +81-3-3436-7542    Fax: +81-3-3436-7570
------------------------------------------------------


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tim McGrath" <tmcgrath@portcomm.com.au>
To: "Yukinori Saito" <y-saito@ecom.jp>
Cc: <bill.meadows@sun.com>; <anne.hendry@sun.com>;
<jamie.clark@oasis-open.org>; <ksh@ccmail.sookmyung.ac.kr>;
<jason@kcals.or.kr>; <zb02@cnis.gov.cn>; <kcyee@cecid.hku.hk>;
<n.ito@ea-eca.org>; <jon.bosak@sun.com>; "BP-ATF" <BP-atf@ecom.jp>
Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2004 12:21 PM
Subject: Re: UBL Pacific coordination call 9|10 February 2004


Many thanks for your knowledgable work on translating the UBL library.

In answer to your two questions

>(1) What is difference between LineItem and Item?
>the BasePrice is formed under LineItem and Item.
>What kind of usage do you assume about both the BasePrice under LineItem
and
>the BasePrice under Item?
>

Firstly, BasePrice is a structure that defines the starting pricing
scheme for an Item. Another term may be Gross Price (but that is not
strictly correct).

In many cases an Item will have a BasePrice that carries directly onto
the Invoice. However, it may be the base that whilst an Item has one
BasePrice it may also wish to apply a different price to certain
transactions - possibly based on contracts or other arrangements. In
this case the BasePrice is associated with the LineItem for a particular
transaction.

Another situation is where an Item will have a set of BasePrices (e.g.
based on different quantities). It is only when a quantity is Ordered
(or Invoiced) that we know which one of the BasePrices apply to this
transaction. So the cardinality of BasePrice within Item is none or
many(0..n) and in LineItem the cardinality of BasePrice is one or
none(0..1).

>
>(2) Is 'AllowanceCharge' suitable UBL Name?
>We thought that the 'AllowanceCharge' had better to be changed to
>'PaymentTerms' according to the contents of AllowanceCharge.
>
>
The UBL Library Content team has also struggled with the name for this
ABIE - but unfortuantely we cannot use Payment Terms.

Unfortunately, in English, PaymentTerms means the terms and conditions
by which payment should be made. For example, "pay within 30 days",
"additional fees apply if not paid within 60 days of delivery", etc. UBL
already has an ABIE called Payment Terms (we use it in the Invoice
document).

The meaning of AllowanceCharge is to denote alterations to the pricing
for an Item, Delivery or transaction. So an Item may have a BasePrice
adjusted by allowances (that reduce the amount) and Charges (that
increase the amount).

I agree we need to work on the definitions for both of these two ABIEs.

This is also valuable input into the controlled vocabulry that we are
now developing. It is helpful to see how meanings translate to see where
they are not clear.

Finally, I was curious about the structure you chose for your
spreadsheet models of UBL documents. You have actually created a single
document assembly model of a UBL Order, indicating nesting. That is, a
tree-like diagram within the spreadsheet format.

We have not done this in other UBL models. Our convention has been to
have a single ABIE (or 'root') for each document type and this refers to
a common model of re-usable ABIEs. The difference between the two makes
it hard for comparing and aligning and also means that any UBL schema
generation tools cannot be used on your translated models. I attach a
copy of the translation of a fragment of the UBL model done by Ptrick
Yee of the CNLSC to show the difference in approach.



-- 
regards
tim mcgrath
phone: +618 93352228
postal: po box 1289   fremantle    western australia 6160