ebBP question: ComplexBTA

ebcore message

Since this TC is taking over maintenance of ebBP, here is a question related to the ebBP 2.0.4 OASIS Standard.

Suppose we have a Business Collaboration involving a "Quote Request" and a "Quote Confirmation". In RosettaNet these two document exchanges relate to the same PIP 3A1, "Request Quote". In ebBP it makes sense to model this as a Business Transaction (or one of the UN/CEFACT pattern-specialized types of Business Transaction). From the point of view of the business collaboration that this exchange is part of, the interaction is atomic. The ebBP business transaction is a representation for a PIP.

Now suppose there is a need to enhance the Request Quote transaction to also cover the interactions that support it. Perhaps the Seller needs to contact one or multiple suppliers or sub-contractors to obtain the information needed to generate the Quote Confirmation, and we want to model this.

The ebBP standard does have a construct for this purpose: ComplexBusinessTransaction. If the Seller needs to invoke another business transaction, or even a complex business transaction (recursively involving other transactions), the current standard supports this. It is also possible to define the complex transaction as a series of two transactions, and to associate "visibility" information to them.

Now suppose the embedded transactions are not taking place sequentially, but in parallel. The ebBP standard has a way of expressing nested business flows, and they are available in the content model of the Collaboration elements. However, they are not available in the Complex Business Transaction. I would like to see the content model of Complex Business Transaction Activity to include

like the other ebBP elements. It would mean: the nested flow of activities (perhaps including third parties, parallelism, decisions, forks, joins ..) takes place between the incoming request and response. Why is this not the supported in ebBP 2.0.4? I can't see why a simple linear series of transactions is "atomic", but a parallel execution of those transactions is not. Or why a single recursively nested structure is, but some other structure is not.

A difference between the CBTA content model and the Collaboration content model is the presence of the StatusVisibility element. This element could be included in the collaborationGroup too, leaving the access to the visibility information (using status request type of messages) up to further profiles.