[ubl-ndrsc] UN/CEFACT ATG "Generic Header" Project

[A Gregory <agregory@aeon-llc.com>]

Folks:

I didn't want to raise this during the rush to meet the deadline, and sadly
I was unable to make the face-to-face, but there is an item I'd like to put
on the agenda for NDR.

This concerns a project that is in progress in UN/CEFACT ATG, headed by
Melanie Kudela (mkudela@uc-council.org ) that is proposing to standardize
the basic fields used within e-business documents to carry envelope
information to applications either creating or digesting messages, but
without access to the actual envelope data itself.

This is an incredibly common set of data - we found ourselves adding it in
xCBL, and every other major e-business vocabulary lists this data, typically
as a set of attributes on the document-level element. It includes such
information as who sent the message, who is receiving it, what business
process it is part of (correlation IDs), and similar. It is very similar to
some of the control fields found in EDI messages.

The generic header project is standardizing the names and datatypes for
these fields. It would be fairly simple to adopt the proposed standard, and
fit this information in as a set of standard, optional attributes at the
document level. (And I can guarantee that of we don't include this basic
information in our version 1.0, we'll have requests to include it in our 1.1
release...)

Typically, these fields are used by translators that are communicating with
a back office application, and which are capable of only performing the
translation on a single XML document at a time. If the envelope information
isn't present, then the translator has to make calls out to a database or
other place where the envelope information is stored. This is often not
possible, especially for users with less sophisticated systems, since a link
to the envelope received and opened at a corporate gateway doesn't always
exist.

Melanie and her group can supply materials describing the project, but I
think it would be great if we could adopt this standard as a part of the UBL
library, and figure out how to implement it. At the very least, I'd like to
add it to the agenda for discussion at the next NDR con-call.

Cheers,

Arofan Gregory