Suggestion for a basis for subset profile conformance clauses

[Stephen D Green <stephengreenubl@gmail.com>]

Suggestion for a basis for subset profile conformance clauses

 

 

In the UBL 1.0 Small Business Subset were clauses which

I found later to be very difficult to test precisely and this

might make conformance testing and conformance claims

problematic. The introduction of conformance clauses in

recent standard specifications is to aid interoperability and

promote adoption through the clarification of what it means

for an implementation to conform to a standard specification.

 

To promote adoption of subsets for the OASIS Universal

Business Language it is important to include a conformance

clause of set of clauses and I would suggest that a subset

conformance clause should target more than just the UBL

documents (Invoice, Order, etc) themselves but also there

should be a conformance clause for a sending system, one

for a receiving system instead of or in addition to the clause

for conformance of the documents themselves. I would like

to suggest as a basis for the clause for the conformance

target of sending system conformance to a set of statements

which amount to the sending system being able to send a

certain set of BIEs in a given document, as defined by the

subset schema for that document. I would suggest that a

basis for a clause for the target of a receiving system would 

be a conformance clause requiring that the system MUST

NOT reject a document merely because of the presence in

it of any of the BIEs as defined by the subset schema (or

list of BIEs, e.g. given as a set of XPath expressions).

 

As a simplistic example, if a subset contains BIEs X,Y,Z of

which Y and Z are mandatory and X is optional, there could

be a set of specification requirements to the effect that the

sender system MUST be able to send all BIEs X, Y and Z

in sending that particular document (even though only Y

and Z are mandatory in any given document of that type).

A conformance clause for the target of the sending system

would mandate these particular statements as necessary

for the conformance of that system. A set of statements that

target the receiving system would require that the system

MUST NOT reject a document of that type merely because

it contains BIE X or Y or Z. A conformance clause for the

receiving system would make the statements mandatory

for conformance by such a system. There would be a set of 

statements for each conformance target that the documents

of that type MUST contain BIEs Y and Z because these are

mandatory.

 

Such conformance clauses and this focus on testability may

help to promote adoption of any given subset and contribute

to successful adoption and interoperable implementations.

 

 

Best regards

 

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Stephen D Green