Re: [ubl-comment] To define propietary business documents

[Tim McGrath <tmcgrath@portcomm.com.au>]

Thomas, it is very encouraging to hear that you are applying our work to 
real world applications.

In broad terms what you are building is a context-specific extension of 
the UBL Library. The design of UBL is that you should be able to take 
the common BIEs and add these contexts as new BIEs to developed 
customized schemas. After all, a BIE is a Core Component in a specific 
context, the more context you have the more BIEs. Conetxts should be 
defined within sets of 'drivers'. To date we (via ebXML) have identified 
eight potential context drivers, these are:
. Business Process - The business process as described using the ebXML 
Catalogue of Common Business Processes as extended by the user.
. Product Classification - Factors influencing semantics that are the 
result of the goods or services being exchanged, handled, or paid for, 
etc. (e.g. the buying of consulting services as opposed to materials)
. Industry Classification - Semantic influences related to the industry 
or industries of the trading partners (e.g., product identification 
schemes used in different industries).
. Geopolitical - Geographical factors that influence business semantics 
(e.g., the structure of an address).
. Official Constraints - Legal and governmental influences on semantics 
(e.g. hazardous materials information required by law when shipping goods).
. Business Process Role - The actors conducting a particular business 
process, as identified in the Catalogue of Common Business Processes.
. Supporting Role - Semantic influences related to nonpartner roles 
(e.g., data required by a third-party shipper in an order response going 
from seller to buyer.)
. System Capabilities - This context category exists to capture the 
limitations of systems (e.g. in existing back office can only support an 
address in a certain form).

The current UBL Library has place holders for most of these but as yet 
no population.

In your case, it sounds to me as though you are dealing with a specific 
Business Process Role context. The theory is that you should define your 
context as attributes to the BIEs (e.g. Business Process Role value is 
"Partner = COMPANYXYZ"). A schema can then be assembled using the BIEs 
required for your context. In the next few weeks we shall be publishing 
a methodology document that attempts to formalise this process in more 
detail.

Furthermore, UBL is also developing a context methodology engine which 
will procedurally transform schemas based on values for these context 
drivers. I suggest that someone from the UBL Context Methodology or 
Context Drivers sub-committee may be able to brief you on the current 
state of play. In fact, it may be very useful for you to provide input 
into their work as a 'use case'.

I am afraid this does not give you an immediate resolution to your 
requirement but i hope you can keep in touch and maybe work with us on this.

Thomas Lee wrote:

>Dear UBL experts,
>
>I need to design business documents which have propietary data items for
>
>a specific organization. I hope to apply the UBL methodology to analyze
>and model the documents into XML Schemas. Is it recommended or a common
>practice to define a propietary set of CCs/BIEs (which in turn define
>the
>business documents that I need) from the CCs/BIEs already defined in
>existing UBL library (translated from xCBL)? Does anyone of you have
>similar experience to share with you? Can you recommend any materials
>for
>me to reference? Is there any formal modeling procedure that I can
>follow for
>my task?
>
>Regards,
>
>Thomas
>
>--
>  Thomas Y.T. LEE
>  Chief Technology Officer
>  Center for E-Commerce Infrastructure Development (CECID)
>  Department of Computer Science and Information Systems
>  The University of Hong Kong
>  E-mail: ytlee@csis.hku.hk  URL: http://www.cecid.hku.hk
>  Tel: +852 22415388  Fax: +852 25474611
>  Room 301, Chow Yei Ching Building
>  Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong SAR, China
>

-- 
regards
tim mcgrath
fremantle  western australia 6160
phone: +618 93352228  fax: +618 93352142