Re: [ebxml-cppa] Re: [ebxml-msg] CPA & MS overriding parameters

[James Bryce Clark <jamie.clark@mmiec.com>]

    I agree quite strongly with Marty's point below. 
    Remember that, for many users, the business rules that
may be invoked by the CPA are used as a filter -- they are only
willing to do business on an automated, non-human-monitored basis,
on the condition that they can constraint the universe of possible
outcomes by using those rules.   
    So if an incoming message from the "other"
side can override them, the work they put into negotiating a CPA is
thwarted.   Put differently, their risk allocation decisions
have been subverted.   
 
One more note below, after Suresh's comment.  

At 06:01 AM 11/14/01, Martin W Sachs wrote:
> * * *  The CPA documents
> policy agreed to by two parties.  If one party can
> override information in the CPA, that party is violating the
> agreement.
>
> The CPA can identify that parameters that both parties agree can be
> overridden.  But then, why bother putting them in the CPA at all?
> Once you
> decide that the MS can override the CPA, there is no reason to put
> those
> parameters in the CPA.  Let them just be dynamic parameters.
>
> I don't understand the point about the CPA and MS work proceeding
> independently.  That would imply that no coordination is
> needed.  Since the
> main job of the CPA is to provide configuration information to the MSH,
> it
> makes absolutely no sense to let them get out of sync. * * *
>
> Suresh_Damodaran@stercomm.com> on 11/13/2001
> 06:28:59 PM
> > * * * If CPA is indeed a document that captures policy, then CPA may
> > also
> > specify which MS parameters that the parties to the CPA wants to override
> > using the values in the CPA (the duplication serves as a check, if
> > necessary). This allows for both business cases where CPA values are
> > never overridden, and the other business case of MSG overriding some
> > values. * * * 

As to the CPA explicitly permitting specified parameters to be overridden
from within the MSG header, this is not so different from the
"override" idea baked into the BPSS in May, but the two would
need to be reconciled.

Also, as a best practices matter, I am concerned that the practice would
encourage logically-weak, header-dependent systems to demand that their
trading partners "dumb down" with them and decline to use the
functionality of the CPA.   This would not promote
interoperability, or the evolution of wider and more robust
transacting.

Best regards  Jamie Clark 

James Bryce Clark
VP and General Counsel, McLure-Moynihan Inc.
(www.mmiec.com)
Chair, ABA Business Law Subcommittee on Electronic Commerce
(www.abanet.org/buslaw/cyber/ecommerce/ecommerce.html)
1 818 597 9475   jamie.clark@mmiec.com   
jbc@lawyer.com