RE: [egov] Naming and Design Rules for E-Government

["Paul Spencer" <paul.spencer@boynings.co.uk>]

Michael,

That looks a useful document. Although the UK naming conventions vary from
the US, ebXML and UBL, I agree that we are now out of step in the UK (we
were first!). We have been discussing this internally. It seems inevitable
that any international agreement will reflect the ebXML NDR. Incidentally,
our guidelines are well overdue for a new release, which has just been
agreed internally and will come out soon.

Your point on strong schemas is one I have been considering for some time.
My view, like yours, is that international standards must necessarily be
flexible, and national standards might want to add restrictions. In general,
the national standards should just apply additional constraints, such that
any message valid to a national standard will be valid to the international
standard. In terms of mechanisms for this, I do not think that any of the
approaches available in XML Schema is maintainable in this environment. My
approach has therefore been to use XML Schema to define the international
standard, then Schematron to add constraints to form a national standard.
This is the approach we used within OASIS for the Election Markup Language.
We have been using this successfully in the UK and it will shortly be
adopted in many other countries. The approach is to define the international
standard using XML Schema, then the national standard using Schematron *just
to indicate the additional constraints*. The Schematron forms the normative
definition of the constraints (and has the additional advantage that it can
express constraints that XML Schema cannot) but it is then up to
implementers whether they implement this two-stage validation or choose some
other mechanism. I have implemented a validator that checks EML messages
first to the international standard, then the additional national
constraints.

In practice, we have a slight variation from this as the UK address data
types are not compatible with the OASIS CIQ (xNAL) structures, but we are
close ...

I attach the original discussion document, which is now nearly 18 months
old, as this shows the thinking behind the solution we adopted. The solution
is described in more detail in the document accessible from the link below.

The description of the EML UK Customization and the Schematron schemas
themselves can be downloaded from
http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/schemasstandards/agreedschema_schema.asp?schemaid=
201.

Regards

Paul Spencer
Director
Boynings Consulting Ltd
http://www.boynings.co.uk


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Bang Kjeldgaard [mailto:mbk@itst.dk]
> Sent: 21 January 2004 14:19
> To: egov@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: [egov] Naming and Design Rules for E-Government
>
>
> Dear all in the e-Government TC,
>
> Here is our suggestion for a new eGovernment TC initiative
> regarding Naming
> and Design Rules for E-Government. For discussion at our the next meeting.
> Comments are also welcome now :-).
>  <<Naming and Design Rules for eGovernment.doc>>
> Best regards
>
> Michael Bang Kjeldgaard
> Chief consultant
> IT Strategic Center
> National IT and Telecom Agency
> Ministery for Science, Technology and Development
> Postal address: Holsteinsgade 63, DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø
> Visiting address: Bredgade 40, DK-1260 Copenhagen K
> Telephone: +45 3545 0000
> Direct: +45 3337 9115
> Mobile: + 45 5123 4254
> Fax: +45 3337 9299
> E-mail: mbk@itst.dk
> www.oio.dk - IT-architecture & OIOXML
> http://isb.oio.dk - Infostructurebase
> www.itst.dk - Agency
> www.vtu.dk - Ministry
>
>
>

Localisation-v1.pdf