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Subject: Proposed Charter for OASIS SET TC


To OASIS Members:

  A draft TC charter has been submitted to establish the OASIS Semantic Support
for Electronic Business Document Interoperability (SET) Technical Committee. In
accordance with the OASIS TC Process Policy section 2.2: 
(http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/process-2008-02-05.php#formation) the
proposed charter is
hereby submitted for comment. The comment period shall remain open until 11:45
pm ET on 26 May 2008. 

  OASIS maintains a mailing list for the purpose of submitting comments on
proposed charters. Any OASIS member may post to this list by sending email to:
mailto:oasis-charter-discuss@lists.oasis-open.org. All messages will be publicly
archived at: 
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/oasis-charter-discuss/. Members who wish to
receive emails must join the group by selecting "join group" on the group home
page:
http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/oasis-charter-discuss/. Employees
of organizational members do not require primary representative approval to
subscribe to the oasis-charter-discuss e-mail.

  A telephone conference will be held among the Convener, the OASIS TC
Administrator, and those proposers who wish to attend within four days of the
close of the comment period. The announcement and call-in information will be
noted on the OASIS Charter Discuss Group Calendar.

  We encourage member comment and ask that you note the name of the proposed TC
(SET) in the subject line of your email message. 

Regards,

Mary
 
---------------------------------------------------
Mary P McRae
Manager of TC Administration, OASIS
email: mary.mcrae@oasis-open.org  
web: www.oasis-open.org
phone: 603.232.9090
 

===========
PROPOSED CHARTER FOR REVIEW AND COMMENT

a. Name of the TC
OASIS Semantic Support for Electronic Business Document Interoperability (SET)
Technical Committee

b. Statement of purpose
No document standard is sufficient for all purposes because the requirements
significantly differ amongst businesses, industries and geo-political regions.
On the other hand, the ultimate aim of business document interoperability is to
exchange business data among partners without any prior agreements related to
the document syntax and semantics. Therefore, an important characteristic of a
document standard is its ability to adapt to different contexts, its
extensibility and customization. 
UN/CEFACT Core Component Technical Specification (CCTS) is an important landmark
in this direction. UN/CEFACT CCTS provides a methodology to identify a set of
reusable building blocks, called Core Components to create electronic documents.
Core Components represent the common data elements of everyday business
documents such as "Address", "Amount", or "Line Item". These reusable building
blocks are then assembled into business documents such as "Order" or "Invoice"
by using the CCTS methodology. Core components are defined to be
context-independent so that they can later be restricted to different contexts.
Many core components defined by UN/CEFACT are available to users from UN/CEFACT
Core Component Library.

CCTS is gaining widespread adoption by both the horizontal and the vertical
standard groups. Universal Business Language (UBL) was the first implementation
of the CCTS methodology. Some earlier horizontal standards such as Global
Standard One (GS1) XML and Open Applications Group Integration Specification
(OAGIS), and some vertical industry standards such as CIDX and RosettaNet have
also taken up CCTS. 

The OASIS SET TC aims to specify semantic mechanisms to achieve interoperability
among document standards based of UN/CEFACT CCTS used in B2B, B2G and G2G
applications by continuing work initiated by the iSURF Project
(http://www.iSURFProject.eu) in three respects:

i.	Semantic Support for Context Domains
	Core component based document schema customization allows the
modification of standard components in response to contextual needs. Schemas can
be extended by adding new components or can be restricted by removing components
or by limiting cardinality of components to a subset. Eight context categories
have also been introduced. When a document schema needs to be customized for a
context, users need to manually discover or provide component versions
applicable to that particular context.

	The OASIS SET TC aims to specify semantic support mechanisms to provide
machine processable semantic representations for the context domains to annotate
core components to facilitate their discovery and reuse. This semantic will be
obtained from the taxonomies and code lists already in use in the industry. This
will allow the development of automated processes that intelligently search
through custom components by interpreting class-subclass, equivalence and other
relationships specified in context ontologies and gather applicable versions of
components.

ii.	Semantic Support for Customization of Core Components and Business
Document Schemas 
Core component based business document schemas are composed of several basic and
aggregate components. Aggregate components themselves are collections of other
basic and aggregate components in a recursive manner. Many aggregate components
in this hierarchy are included by other components and document schemas
themselves. So customizing an intermediate component for a context implicitly
customizes all document schemas including that component for the same context.

In order to customize a document schema for a particular business context, it is
necessary to traverse the component hierarchy of the schema and gather
applicable custom versions. Furthermore, a business context value may consist of
values from multiple context categories. Semantic support will be provided for
this purpose by using context ontologies. 

The ability to automate schema customization will lead to a significant new
flexibility, that is, it becomes possible to merge multiple versions of a
component to generate additional versions of that particular component. This
greatly simplifies the component customization effort as it is no longer
necessary to manually provide customized components for every single business
context. Instead, it is sufficient to customize components for individual
context categories since combinations for multiple categories can be
automatically generated as needed. When a target context value includes multiple
categories or has multiple parents or a mixture of both, component repository
may contain multiple applicable versions of a particular component. For such
cases, the derivation rules from individual versions will be automatically
serialized by successively applying them to the corresponding document
component.

iii.	Semantic Support for Document Translation
OASIS SET TC will provide a machine processable mechanism that can express the
structure and the semantics of components together with their correspondences in
different versions. In this way, it will become possible to develop tools to
help with semantic translation of Core component based electronic business
documents. For this purpose, first a UBL "Component Ontology" will be developed.


In the later phases, this ontology will be expanded to cover other document
standards based on CCTS.
 The Component Ontology serves two major purposes:

.	Representing the semantics of components: Document customization takes
place at the level of individual types and elements; hence, translation needs to
be done at the same level. When an automated process compares two versions of a
schema, it needs to be able to identify corresponding elements in these schemas.
When document elements are represented as classes of a common component
ontology, it becomes possible to utilize that ontology for the computation of
similarities between elements from different schemas.

.	Representing the structure of document schemas: Core component based
document schemas are complex hierarchies including numerous types and elements
any of which might be modified through customization. Even in the case of
semantically equivalent components, comparison is a complicated task unless
supported by proper tools. By representing the structural layout of types and
elements using classes from common component ontology, it becomes possible to
utilize semantic reasoners for the comparison of these complex hierarchies.

c. Scope
CCTS is gaining widespread adoption by both the horizontal and the vertical
standard groups. Universal Business Language (UBL) was the first implementation
of the CCTS methodology. Some earlier horizontal standards such as  Global
Standard One (GS1) XML and Open Applications Group Integration Specification
(OAGIS), and some vertical industry standards such as CIDX and RosettaNet have
also taken up CCTS. However, all these standards apply CCTS differently as
detailed in:
- Kabak Y., Dogac A., "A Survey and Analysis of Electronic Business Document
Standards", http://www.srdc.metu.edu.tr/webpage/publications 

The SET TC will assess the existing CCTS based document standards to define and
implement semantic support for interoperability among them starting with
different customization of UBL document schemas and will provide tool support
and a testbed for testing interoperability. 

d. Deliverables
OASIS SET TC will develop three Technical Specifications described below, and
also may elect to issue Technical Reports and White Papers:

.	Specification of semantic support mechanisms to provide machine
processable semantic representations for the context domains to annotate core
components to facilitate their discovery and reuse -- final version available in
December 2008 (the TC may issue intermediate versions as frequently as every 6
months)

.	Specification of Semantic Support for Customization of Core Components
and Business Document Schemas in June 2009 (intermediate versions may be
available as frequently as every 6 months)

.	Specification of machine processable mechanism that can express the
structure and the semantics of components together with their correspondences in
different versions

.	Technical Reports will be drafted as appropriate

.	White Papers as appropriate

e. IPR Mode
SET TC will operate under "RF on Limited Terms" mode.

f. Anticipated audience
The anticipated audience for this work includes members of the Ontolog Forum,
OASIS ebXML Registry TC, OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL) TC, non-OASIS
Business and Government Document standards groups, the related units of NIST,
programmers, vendors and users. The work should be of interest to anyone
involved with Electronic Business Documents.

g. Language.
English. The TC may elect to form subcommittees that produce localized
documentation of the TC's work in additional languages.

(2) Non-normative information:
(2)(a) Identification of similar or applicable work that is being done in other
OASIS TCs or by other organizations, why there is a need for another effort in
this area and how this proposed TC will be different, and what level of liaison
will be pursued with these other organizations.

.	UN/CEFACT CCTS provides the basis of the work proposed. The work
proposed in the SET TC complements the CCTS approach through semantic
mechanisms. The SET TC will try to establish a liaison with UN/CEFACT.

.	OASIS UBL TC: This is the most related standard since it is the first
XML implementation of UN/CEFACT CTTS. The SET TC will complement this standard
by providing the semantic discovery, reuse, customization and translation of
CTTS based documents. UBL TC co-chair, Tim McGrath is a founding member of the
SET TC.

.	OASIS ebXML Registry TC: The semantic annotation and discovery of the
document components will be achieved through the ebXML Registry. The SET TC
founding member, Asuman Dogac has already provided an OASIS ebXML Registry
Technical Committee  approved Committee Draft: 

o	Dogac A., "ebXML Registry Profile for Web Ontology Language (OWL)",
OASIS ebXML Registry Technical Committee approved Committee Draft.

Further liaison will be established with the ebXML Registry related with how to
store and annotate core components as the work progresses.

OASIS SEE TC: The SEE TC concentrates on providing a semantic environment for
the execution of Web services. The SET TC, on the other hand, will concentrate
on the document interoperability of electronic business documents which use
UN/CEFACT CCTS. Further liaison will be sought with the SEE TC for transporting
documents using Web services in a SoA architecture.

 (2)(b) The date, time, and location of the first meeting, whether it will be
held in person or by telephone, and who will sponsor this first meeting. The
first meeting of a TC shall occur no less than 30 days after the announcement of
its formation in the case of a meeting held exclusively by telephone or other
electronic means, and no less than 45 days after the announcement of its
formation in the case of a meeting held face-to-face (whether or not a telephone
bridge is also available).

July 10, 2008, 14:00 GMT / 10:00 AM ET using Skype

(2)(c) The projected on-going meeting schedule for the year following the
formation of the TC, or until the projected date of the final deliverable,
whichever comes first, and who will be expected to sponsor these meetings.
Meeting Schedule: Monthly teleconferences using Skype. 

(2)(d) The names, electronic mail addresses, and membership affiliations of at
least Minimum Membership who support this proposal and are committed to the
Charter and projected meeting schedule.

Asuman Dogac, Asuman@srdc.metu.edu.tr, Middle East Technical University (METU)
Tim McGrath, tim.mcgrath@documentengineeringservices.com, Document Engineering
Services
Stephen D. Green, Stephen.green@systml.co.uk, Associate
Yildiray Kabak, yildiray@srdc.metu.edu.tr, Middle East Technical University
(METU)
Mustafa Yuksel, mustafa@srdc.metu.edu.tr, Middle East Technical University
(METU)

(2)(e) The name of the Convener who must be an Eligible Person.
Asuman Dogac will be the convenor.

(2)(f) The name of the Member Section with which the TC intends to affiliate, if
any.
The TC is not planning to affiliate with a Member Section at this time.

(2)(g) Optionally, a list of contributions of existing technical work that the
proposers anticipate will be made to this TC.

1.	Yarimagan Y., Dogac A., "Semantics Based Customization of UBL Document
Schemas", Journal of Distributed and Parallel Databases, Springer-Verlag, Volume
22, Numbers 2-3 / December 2007, pp. 107-131.
2.	Yarimagan Y., Dogac A., "A Semantic based Solution for the
Interoperability of UBL Schemas", IEEE Internet Computing, to appear.
3.	Yarimagan Y., "Semantic Enrichment for the Automated Customization and
Interoperability of UBL Schemas", PhD Thesis, Dept. of Computer Eng., Middle
East Technical University, March 2008.
4.	Kabak Y., Dogac A., "A Survey and Analysis of Electronic Business
Document Standards", Submitted for publication.
References 1, 2 and 4 are available from:
http://www.srdc.metu.edu.tr/publications 
Reference 3 will be available from the TC home page.

(2)(h) Optionally, a draft Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document regarding
the planned scope of the TC, for posting on the TC's website.
Will be provided later.

(2)(i) Optionally, a proposed working title and acronym for the specification(s)
to be developed by the TC.
Will be provided later.




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