[ebxml-cppa] Party Details

[Duane Nickull <duane@xmlglobal.com>]

Hello all:

After reveiwing the latest samples of the CPP/A,  I have
questions/comments.

The link to the Company details is specified as follows:

<tp:PartyInfo tp:partyName="CompanyA"
tp:defaultMshChannelId="channelA1">
 <tp:PartyId tp:type="DUNS">123456789</tp:PartyId>
 <tp:PartyRef xlink:href="http://CompanyA.com/about.html"/>
...

1.  Has anyone determined is Dun & Bradstreet numbers will be able to be
used for unique identifiers and if so,  must they point at anything
useful?  The last time I looked at DUNS, it was fairly difficult to get
for companies outside of the US.

The schema declares no enumerated list for values of the tp:type
attribute so how can we reliably count on this ID as being unique,
recognizable (semantically meaningful too) and easy to acquire and
depend on?

2. The PartyRef link is still an HTML link.  I have raised this as an
issue before.

If ebXML is always to count of human intervention to design the Business
Activity,  then maybe this can suffice (assuming that everyone who uses
ebXML will also read and write only in english).

I prefer building an infrastructure that can rely on automated or
partially automated processes to help suggest designs for business
collaborations,  it is essential that an application can read and
understand the details of the PartyRef.

Why?  The information used for the COntext drivers can only be learned
from this information.  It is not always guaranteed that it will be
there in the RIM metadata.  There are several context drivers that will
depend on this information to build the final CRM (context Rules
Message), most notibly "geopolitical" which also controls government
restrictions (I'm talking about stuff similar to how hard it is for you
Americans to buy Cuban Cigars).

I suggest that you have a way to tell the one activating the xlink what
format the information is in.  Can we do something like this:

<tp:PartyRef tp:format="eCo.dtd"
xlink:href="http://CompanyA.com/CompanyAeCo.xml"/>

The format attribute could be enumerated types of known XML based
information to allow another application to recognize and parse it as
such.  Such formats could include the XAL and XNL work from OASIS, eCo
from CommerceNet and any other XML address format that may be useful to
include.  YOu could still have plain ole' HTML too.

THoughts?

Duane Nickull
-- 
CTO, XML Global Technologies
****************************
Transformation - http://www.xmlglobal.com/prod/foundation/
ebXML Central - http://www.xmlglobal.com/prod/central/