Re: [ubl] Re: Thoughts on Ken's UBL Customization document - gkholman-ubl-modeling-0.4

[Tim McGrath <tmcgrath@portcomm.com.au>]

Like Stephen, I will not be part of the face-to- face discussion but I 
am going through this document with great interest (and agreement).  I 
have only got to the end of section 4, but some of the biggest 
revelations are that ...

a. The title should be more confident.  I suggest we call this "UBL 
Customization: subsets, extensions, versions - validation and 
conformance".  I suspect this will be the focus of the way ahead for UBL 
and we should grasp the scope from the outset.
b. I get what you mean by serendipity but jay is right, it is the wrong 
word. it really describes the ability to extend reach of trading 
partnerships without additional programming of interfaces.  It is more 
like a 'leveraging investment' potential.
b. the application model you paint in your scenarios is not typical. 
what you describe (not unexpectedly) is a common interface approach.  it 
describes a new application for creating everyone's documents.  i think 
we need an application-to-application scenario.  so it may be better to 
view this as Training Company's application needs to create CES, ATS,and 
NES invoice documents.  Training Compnay dont normally want to create 
their Invoices and suck it into their application - they want their 
application to create the Invoice.  They already have their information 
inside their application.
c. you say in 4.3 "I'm not familiar with any other scheme that employs 
exhaustive enumeration, but I'm feeling more and more confident this is 
the way to go. The critical nature of this, though, indicates it should 
be one of the higher priority action items when exploring this 
approach."  Well 20 years of EDI translation software has been based on 
this approach. Check out http://www.edi-center.com/edi-translator.htm.  
Basically, what they call an EDI Translator is the application that 
tests conformity based on a proprietary version of  what you call an 
XPath text report. What they call a map is the XPath instance report.

I will respond later when I have completed the remaining sections.

PS
i am getting a real urge to do some editing and add some diagrams to 
make it a bit less technical. Perhaps the next version after the plenary 
discussions? 

-- 
regards
tim mcgrath
phone: +618 93352228  
postal: po box 1289   fremantle    western australia 6160
web: http://www.portcomm.com.au/tmcgrath