Cardinality of supplemental components in UBL unqualified data types

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

Hi, everyone,

In preparing a response to a poster on UBL Dev, an oversight on my 
part has come to light that we need to discuss, please.

When I created the UBL 2.1 unqualified data type schema from the core 
component schema, I maintained the cardinality of supplemental 
components (attributes) found in the base schema.  All supplemental 
components are optional in the base schema.

I recognized this was adding some optional attributes to UBL 2.1, and 
I'm pleased with that because there are cases when we need the new 
attributes that were not in UBL 2.0.  For example, the 
currencyCodeListID attribute which we need in UBL 2.1 but was not 
available in UBL 2.0.  In PRD2 most of the CCTS supplementary 
components are made available, and all are optional.

However, though backward compatible, in PRD2 I inadvertently have not 
preserved the mandatory nature of the following supplemental 
components, that were mandatory in UBL 2.0:

   AmountType/@currencyID
   BinaryObjectType/@mimeCode
   MeasureType/@unitCode

(there are others that we don't use:

   GraphicType/@mimeCode
   PictureType/@mimeCode
   SoundType/@mimeCode
   VideoType/@mimeCode
)

I am planning to make the above attributes again mandatory in 
PRD3.  This will be backward compatible with UBL 2.0 but not with UBL 2.1 PRD2.

Does anyone see a problem with that, or did anyone appreciate that 
the above attributes were optional?  While I like the idea of falling 
back to the document currency code when the currencyID attribute is 
absent, this doesn't work when the document currency code is not 
specified.  Forcing the above attributes is unambiguous and, I think, 
promotes interoperability.

So, personally, I think the mandatory nature of the above should be restored.

Please let me know your thoughts on this.

. . . . . . . . . . Ken

--
Contact us for world-wide XML consulting and instructor-led training
Free 5-hour video lecture: XSLT/XPath 1.0 & 2.0 http://ude.my/t37DVX
Crane Softwrights Ltd.            http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/o/
G. Ken Holman                   mailto:gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com
Google+ profile: https://plus.google.com/116832879756988317389/about
Legal business disclaimers:    http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/legal