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Subject: RE: [ubl-cmsc] Use Case Categories: Integration vs. Customization
What is "integration"? > -----Original Message----- > From: Burcham, Bill [mailto:Bill_Burcham@stercomm.com] > Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 11:36 AM > To: ubl-cmsc@lists.oasis-open.org > Subject: [ubl-cmsc] Use Case Categories: Integration vs. Customization > > > It's my perception from mostly listening to our SC's over the > past few weeks > that the primary category of use case we've been implicitly > working from is > one where some user wants to craft a new kind of business > document. I'll > call this category of use case "customization". I haven't heard any > discussion of what I feel is the far broader and more > pertinent category of > use case that I'll call "integration". I just looked at out > current list of > use cases and verified that none of them talk about integration. > > My understanding of customization would yield a scenario like this. A > developer needs a brand new kind of business document for a brand new > application (with a brand new trading partner). That > developer uses the UBL > BIE's as a starting point, describes the deltas in terms of > context _or_ XSD > derivation, and then presses some sort of button to generate the new > schemas. Oh and since we aren't going to do "aggregation", > the developer > would then I guess write a new schema and import those generated > (contextualized) BIE's in it. > > Taking a step backward -- I don't think that the value of our > methodology > (CM) has been proven for this kind of scenario. I was hoping that the > concrete example in the Extensions Position Paper would prove > it, but that > scenario hasn't shown up yet. I guess that's not too > suprising, since we > are only beginning to develop use cases. What might be > surprising is that I > don't believe there's any value we _could_ prove. While I > believe that > certain users will derive documents from our BIE starting > points, I believe > to prove the value of UBL and more specifically CM we have to > look at a > different category of use. > > I think that by far the most important problem to solve is > the "integration" > problem. I also feel that this is where we can actually > prove some value to > CM. Further, I _suspect_ that this is the real problem way > back in the > primordial consciousness, that spawned CM. That's why I find > it so odd that > no one has talked about it overtly. Allow me... > > In integration problems there are always at least two parties. As a > simplifying assumption perhaps we could assume that the > parties have systems > in place communicating via (contextualized) UBL components. Let's > characterize that. What then becomes interesting, to my > mind, is what are > the "change cases"? This is what I'd like to hear from the > domain experts. > > For instance, let's say that you've got a driving party (800 > lb gorrila) and > it decides to change some structure. Question for business > expert: what > structure are they going to change? > > After that, it's either the case that the change is backward > compatible or > not. In the case of a backward compatible change, participants will > implement the change on different schedules. What mechanisms shall we > specify in support of that. In the case where the change is > not backward > compatible: what mechanisms shall we specify to enforce that? > > Did I miss the memo wherein the integration problem is proved > to simply be a > special case of the customization problem? If so, please > point me to it and > my life will get a lot simpler. > > My purpose in this rant is to try to narrow the scope of what > were asking > for when we go to the domain experts for use cases. Again, I > see great > potential value in integration. I'd like to focus our effort > there. And > while it is a heckuva lot easier to understand, I see almost > no potential > value in customization. Feels kind of like those keys and > that street lamp. > I look forward to hearing your views. > > -Bill > > ---------------------------------------------------------------- > To subscribe or unsubscribe from this elist use the subscription > manager: <http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl> >
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