Ammendment Re: Suggestion for a basis for subset profile conformance clauses

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

I would refine the previous comment to say that the previous receiving system

conformance clause might not have been fully testable (since not every possible

document received will be tested). I could refine this to say that a receivng system

MUST be able to receive a document which contains every element in the subset

and every multiple cardinality element twice or more times in the document.

 

I would suggest that continuing along the lines of a conformance test centric 

subset profile there might be consideration of test assertions for such a

profile, again considering testability of the assertions and the normative

statements from which they are derived.

 

Here is an example of a test assertion set for, say, a conformance clause relating to

the invoice document type (there might be a clause for each type to allow

implementations to implement just one or more document types and still

be conformant).

 

It is based on an example profile which somehow lists every element (ignoring

attributes for conformance requirements except insofar as they are ever mandatory

for the UBL standard schema validity for that document type)

 

e.g.

 

Where the profile for the subsets contains statements like this:

...

Statement INV004: A subset sending system which can send a subset invoice MUST be able to send a document valid according to the OASIS standard UBL 2.1 Invoice schema and containing element /in:Invoice/cbc:ID

 

Statement INV005: A subset sending system which can send a subset invoice MUST be able to send a document valid according to the OASIS standard UBL 2.1 Invoice schema and containing element /in:Invoice/cbc:CopyIndicator

... 

one such statement for each element in the subset or a table to the same effect or some other

blanket statement to this effect including reference to an overall schema for the subset

...

 

The conformance clause for subset invoice sending systems would require conformance to

all these statements. Another clause for receiving systems might require conformance to

a statement that receiving systes receiving a subset invoice be able to receive one with all

elements in the subset (including multiple occurences where the schema includes multiple

occurences).

 

Test assertions could be presented in the form of markup like this

-- here using OASIS (in progress) Test Assertion Markup Language:

<!-- one set of normative statements and corresponding test assertions for every document type in the subset and for each of these sets one corresponding conformance clause for sending systems (for that document type) and one for recieving systems (for that document type) -->
<testAssertionSet xmlns="http://docs.oasis-open.org/ns/tag/taml-201002/" setid="ubl-subset.example.ta-set.1" setname="Invoice Subset">
<common>
...
<!-- need some bindings for prefixes used in the XPath expressions -->
</common>
...
<testAssertion id="ubl-invoice-subset.example.ta.s4">
<!-- the actual nomative source might be a table or might rely on a schema to list all elements in the subset (attributes too but these might be optional) -->
<normativeSource><derivedSourceItem documentId="..." resourceProvenanceId="..." uri="...">A subset sending system which can send a subset invoice MUST be able to send a document valid according to the OASIS standard UBL 2.1 Invoice schema and containing element /in:Invoice/cbc:ID</derivedSourceItem></normativeSource>
<target>subset sending system</target>
<prerequisite>can send a subset document valid according to the OASIS standard UBL 2.1 Invoice schema</prerequisite>
<predicate>can send a document valid according to the OASIS standard UBL 2.1 Invoice schema and containing element /in:Invoice/cbc:ID</predicate>
<prescription level="mandatory"/>
</testAssertion>
<testAssertion id="ubl-invoice-subset.example.ta.s5">
<normativeSource><derivedSourceItem documentId="..." resourceProvenanceId="..." uri="...">...</derivedSourceItem></normativeSource>
<target>subset sending system</target>
<prerequisite>can send a subset document valid according to the OASIS standard UBL 2.1 Invoice schema</prerequisite>
<predicate>can send a document valid according to the OASIS standard UBL 2.1 Invoice schema and containing element /in:Invoice/cbc:CopyIndicator</predicate>
<prescription level="mandatory"/>
</testAssertion>
<testAssertion id="ubl-invoice-subset.example.ta.s6">
<normativeSource><derivedSourceItem documentId="..." resourceProvenanceId="..." uri="...">...</derivedSourceItem></normativeSource>
<target>subset sending system</target>
<prerequisite>can send a subset document valid according to the OASIS standard UBL 2.1 Invoice schema</prerequisite>
<predicate>can send a document valid according to the OASIS standard UBL 2.1 Invoice schema and containing element /in:Invoice/cbc:UUID</predicate>
<prescription level="mandatory"/>
</testAssertion>

<!-- one normative statement and corresponding test assertion for every element in the subset for that document type -->
...

<testAssertion id="ubl-invoice-subset.example.ta.r1">
<normativeSource><derivedSourceItem documentId="..." resourceProvenanceId="..." uri="...">...</derivedSourceItem></normativeSource>
<target>subset receiving system</target>
<prerequisite>can receive a subset document valid according to the OASIS standard UBL 2.1 Invoice schema</prerequisite>
<predicate>can receive a document valid according to the OASIS standard UBL 2.1 Invoice schema and containing every single-occurence element in that subset once and multiple-occurence element in that document twice or more</predicate>
<prescription level="mandatory"/>
</testAssertion>
...

</testAssertionSet>

 

 

Best regards
 

----

Stephen D Green

On 30 July 2011 18:40, Stephen D Green <stephengreenubl@gmail.com> wrote:

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

 

----

Stephen D Green