RE: Submissions for issues list.

[Bob Haugen <linkage@interaccess.com>]

Abdel Boulmakoul wrote:
>In my e-mail, I was referring to economic contracts. I agree with you that
>the ebXML Business Process team have been addressing contract formation.
>But, I don't think they've defined what does the contract contain (They have
>defined in detail what the business process contains).

Contents of economic contracts ran out of time for ebXML phase 1,
but were included sketchily in the UN/CEFACT UMM Economic
Modeling Elements, which are also referenced in the following BP
technical reports:
Analysis Overview:
http://www.ebxml.org/specs/bpOVER.pdf 
Worksheets:
http://www.ebxml.org/specs/bpWS.pdf 

More work will be done in the upcoming UN/CEFACT Electronic Business Working
Group (ebWG) and a new work item under ISO Open-EDI for Accounting
Ontology.

The short version is that EconomicContracts include collections of reciprocal
EconomicCommitments.  One EconomicCommitment is a promise to
perform one or more EconomicEvents in the future to fulfill the commitment.

(For example, a Purchase Order is an EconomicContract where the Line
Items represent commitments to deliver goods and reciprocal commitments
to pay for them.)

Commitments can be generalized to represent any promised future
event with time and other constraints.  Business process management
software can then monitor the fulfillment (or non-fulfillment) of the
commitments.  

When people understand the idea of monitored commitments, I think 
they will be the killer feature that separates ebXML from traditional EDI.

>My idea, was to extend CPA (which includes information/link to the Business
>process) in away that can incorporate the notion of contractual obligations
>(i.e. Obliged to pay).
>So if you take in account just the operational part of a contract (i.e. what
>it is expected to happen, Not the legal part), I think that we can enrich
>the CPA to contain such information.

"What is expected to happen" is represented by a commitment.
More later...

Another aspect of contracts that we have not yet modeled is Terms
or Terms and Conditions which do not involve economic commitments,
such as nondisclosure agreements.  Those will be tackled in one
of the above groups.

Regards,
Bob Haugen