Re: [ubl] Completed UBL NDR 2.1 XSD schema and CVA generation environment

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

Fellow UBL TC members,

I have posted a major rewrite of the schema generation environment here:

   http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/resources/ubl/#gc2ublndr

This environment will be used by me to create the distribution UBL 
2.1 schemas as a quality assurance test for the schemas that are 
created by eDoCreator.  It also creates the signature extension 
schemas that will be in the next distribution.  These extension 
schemas are modeled by spreadsheets that will also be included in the 
next distribution.

Non-UBL projects who are considering adopting the in-development UBL 
2.1 NDR will find this environment useful for creating the base set 
of schema fragments for their document suite from their document models.

With many thanks to Stephen Green for the direction, the environment 
also has been modified to create user-defined document extensions and 
user-defined additional documents from user-defined models of their 
business information entities.

The running demonstration in the environment creates a document 
extension of a timesheet addition that might be suitable for an 
invoicing scenario, and an arbitrary additional document of test 
constructs illustrating the shared use of the common library.  It 
also happens to completely recreate the UBL 2.1 PRD2 suite of 
document and common business information entity schemas.  The 
environment runs on either a Windows, Linux, BSD or other Unix platform.

Any user wishing to augment their standard UBL documents with 
non-standard extensions should find this environment very helpful in 
synthesizing the schema validation constructs they need.

Any user wishing to create their own documents for their environments 
to use in conjunction with UBL documents should find this environment 
very helpful for the same reasons.

Proposers who bring new documents to the UBL Technical Committee for 
championing in a future revision of UBL will also find the modeling 
and schema generation for additional documents useful to create and 
test prototypes.

I look forward to feedback from all users of UBL and UBL NDR who use 
this environment for their purposes.  It works for everything I need 
to do in my committee responsibilities, but I'm so close to it that I 
cannot tell if it works for the tasks that other project groups and 
other UBL users who also need to create schema fragments.

Thank you for any feedback you can provide.

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

At 2011-10-23 14:54 -0400, I wrote:
> Fellow UBL TC members,
>
> I've completed the first draft of the XSD/CVA generator for UBL NDR 
> 2.1.  This reads a genericode serialization of the UBL NDR 
> spreadsheets and generates documented and runtime XSD schemas and a 
> CVA context/value association file
>
> When thinking last week about an upcoming code list task at 
> UN/CEFACT, I was reminded of arguments raised during a similar 
> development process in the OASIS Code List Representation Technical 
> Committee:  that the TC should *not* be in the business of 
> publishing running executable code in support of its standards.  The 
> two main arguments are:
>
>  (1) - who is going to maintain the code if it breaks and the author
>        is no longer on the committee?
>  (2) - the TC should not be in competition with any organization that
>        may wish to write code to fulfill the same requirements
>
> One of the arguments for producing code was "but this is a reference 
> implementation" and that was deemed insufficient to address the two concerns.
>
> The case study is the CVA to Schematron conversion tool that I 
> wrote, donated to OASIS, and then repatriated back to Crane because 
> of the committee decision:
>
>    http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/resources/ubl/#cva2sch
>
> The same also happened for the presentation stylesheets at the same time:
>
>    http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/resources/ubl/#codess
>
> With this in mind, I've posted the "Genericode to UBL NDR" 
> environment as a free Crane resource with the invitation to the 
> OASIS UBL TC to take it on as a committee resource if you wish (at 
> which point I would then take it off my web site):
>
>    http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/resources/ubl/#gc2ublndr
>
> I think it is fully documented, but I hope TC members will recommend 
> improvements to the documentation that I'm sure will help because 
> I'm too close to the code to know if it is well documented.  The 
> demonstration environment is turnkey for both Unix and Windows 
> environments, taking the UBL 2.1 PRD2 genericode file and recreating 
> the UBL 2.1 PRD2 schemas and the schema-specific portion of the 
> context/value association file.
>
> The documentation will be updated when the UBL NDR 2.1 rules are 
> written to include hyperlinked references into the UBL NDR 2.1 document.
>
> The stylesheet is generalized so that other committees who work with 
> their own UBL NDR spreadsheets can use it to create their own XSD 
> and CVA files.  One feature I added that I'll be recommending to NDR 
> editors is to allow either "UBLName" or "ComponentName" as the title 
> of the first spreadsheet column.  That way we keep our legacy and 
> other projects don't have a distracting use of the UBL abbreviation 
> in their work.
>
> The package includes a copy of the UBL 2.1 PRD2 genericode entities file:
>
>   http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/prd2-UBL-2.1/mod/UBL-Entities-2.1.gc
>
> ... and you can create your own equivalent to the UBL 2.1 PRD2 
> schemas by running a single included batch file.  It is a version of 
> the batch file I'll be using when I create PRD3 schemas.  Execution 
> on my machine takes under 10 seconds to recreate the UBL 2.1 schemas 
> and CVA file using the free Saxon http://saxon.sf.net Home Edition 
> XSLT 2.0 processor.
>
> The stylesheet has only 674 lines of code and 772 lines of 
> documentation.  The readme file is synthesized from the embedded 
> stylesheet documentation so it includes documentation on both using 
> and maintaining the stylesheet.
>
> I'm not planning to announce minor revisions of this, but if you 
> wish you can follow our RSS feed for free resources where 
> notifications of updates are always posted (no doubt someone will 
> suggest improvements):
>
>   http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/resources/crane-resources.rss
>
> I look forward to any feedback and recommendations.
>
> . . . . . . . . . . . . Ken


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