Re: [ebxml-bp] Proposal for minOccurs and maxOccurs attributes toAttachment

["Monica J. Martin" <Monica.Martin@Sun.COM>]

>Yano-san: In that schema, Attachment in DocumentEnvelope is optional.  That's
>reasonable.  But that doesn't seem to fulfil JEITA's requirement.
>
>JEITA's need is that a defined Attachment can be omitted in execution
>time, not to omit Attachment element in a DocumentEnvelope definition.
>
>For example, let's see the following DocumentEnvelope instance.
>
>  <DocumentEnvelope name="SpecExchange" nameID="DE-SpecExchange"
>      businessDocumentIDREF="BD-SpecExchange">
>      <Attachment name="SpecificationDiagram" nameID="Att-SpecDiagram"
>          businessDocumentIDREF="BD-SpecExchange"
>          mimeType="application/pdf">
>          <Specification location="???"/> <!-- what to specify for PDF? -->
>      </Attachment>
>  </DocumentEnvelope>
>
>This DocumentEnvelope references the BusinessDocument whose name is 
>'SpecExchange' and have one PDF Attachment named 'SpecificationDiagram'.
>
>In some cases, this PDF Attachment is used to convey information that
>cannot be expressed by 'SpecExchange' XML BusinessDocument.  On the
>other hand, in the cases that the XML BusinessDocument conveys all
>needed information, a PDF diagram is not needed.  That is, the defined
>PDF Attachment must not be sent.
>
>The schema you showed doesn't seem to allow users to omit the defined
>Attachments in execution time.
>
>That's the reason why I propose min/maxOccurs attributes.  If that 
>Attachment above is defined such as
>
>      <Attachment name="SpecificationDiagram" nameID="Att-SpecDiagram"
>          businessDocumentIDREF="BD-SpecExchange"
>          mimeType="application/pdf"
>          minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1"> <!-- *** this line *** -->
>          <Specification location="???"/>
>      </Attachment>,
>
>an end user can omit the PDF Attachement if not needed.  Of course,
>the user can also attach a PDF diagram as needed.
>  
>
mm1: We could perhaps approach this two ways: 1) Your recommendation, or 
2) Consider if we could add a condition expression on the attachment as 
we've done with the Business Document construct.  In v2.0, we've also 
been discussing how far reaching the use of variables could be on 
condition expressions (right now we use it on the timing constructs).  
We'd welcome your comments which flexibility point meets your 
requirements. The condition expression and variable option are being 
used to recognize changes during the process lifecycle. We are 
coordinating with CPPA, as Dale Moberg (our co-chair) is the CPPA chair.

>Another good point about min/maxOccurs attributes is the alignment
>with ebXML CPPA.  In the CPPA packaging constructs, the Constituent
>element has minOccurs and maxOccurs attributes to specify the range of
>the values that the item may occur.  The alignment with CPPA is
>important because BPSS's BusinessDocument and Attachement elements
>affect CPPA's Constituent elements.
>
>For example, the Constituent element corresponding to the Attachment
>element above may be following:
>
>  <tp:Constituent tp:idref="AttachmentPart" tp:minOccurs="0" tp:maxOccurs="1"/>
>
mm1: May wish to also stay tuned as CPPA is making some errata changes I 
believe here. Thanks.