Re: [ubl-comment] Question about the BusinessCard object

[David Goodenough <david.goodenough@broadwellmanor.co.uk>]

Roberto,

 

Thank you for your reply. But I still do not understand.

 

You say that the Business Card is intended as the electronic version of the

paper equivalent, but then later you say that the recipient is required.

You have a basic bootstrap problem here. How do you get the receipient

Party data? Surely if the Business Card followed its paper equivalent

then it would be destination agnostic. And removing the recipient in no

way stops it being forwarded. You already have the separation between the

sender and the business parties.

 

You say "The recipient is mandatory ... because it is intended to be

exchanged". Yes quite often when you hand out business cards you get

one back, but not always and the cards that are handed over are not marked

for the recipient in any way. The same goes for directories, they do not

contain (or at least they do not have to contain) the recipient's

Party data.

 

When it comes to the digital collaboration object, these are absolutely

fundamental to UBL and saying that the DigitalCapabilities object is the way

to exchange this misses the point. How can you send the DigitalCapabilities

object to someone when you do not know where to send it? It is a recursive

unresolvable problem.

 

There has to be a way to start the communications, and traditionally that is

what the business card or directory entry do and they are broadcast objects

not directed to a particular recipient.

 

To my eyes the text in section 2.3.8.2 is exactly correct, and it is the

implementation of the BusinessCard object that is wrong. And it as you

suggest the second paragraph of section 2.3.8.2 should not be in the

description of the BusinessCard but rather in the DigitalCapabilities

section, why is it there?

 

If the BusinessCard object is not designed to start the communications,

then what is and why is it not part of UBL? If the BusinessCard object

is not there as a broadcast object to start the process, what is its

purpose? From your description the process starts at the DigitalCapabilities

object, the BusinessCard is useless and thus should be removed from the

standard.

David

 

On Tuesday, 10 October 2017 00:11:21 BST JAVEST by Roberto Cisternino wrote:

Hello David,
sorry for waiting so long before providing an answer, I was unable to work fro a while...
please find below my answers:

Il 29/09/2017 16:26, David Goodenough ha scritto:

The business card (as in a piece of card printed with contact details)

is generally a mass produced object, handed out to whoever wants one

with no tailoring to the receiver. It is entirely one-sided, i.e. it

only contains the details of one business/person/organization. Other

sources of similar information would be the headed note paper and

trade or postal directories.

Correct, this reason the UBL BusinessCard is not intended for instructing EDI / B2B systems.
Inside it you can provide Business capabilities in general but not Digital capabilities.
The Business Card is intended as a standard electronic version of the paper one, that can be also used for exchanging data between business directories or simple yellow pages systems, accounting or banking systems.

In order to start a UBL conversation it is necessary for the initiating

party to obtain the Party details of the receiving party, but there seems

to be no high level object that can be send just describing one Party.

These might be printed as QR codes on real business cards or headed

notepaper, or made available for download on a web site.

Once you have the partner Party details then the DigitalCapabilities

and DigitalAgreement conversation can happen, and these can also be

used to update Party information should the need arise.

The UBL DigitalCapabilities are the document you need, this is exactly designed to exchange digital capabilities such as plain old EDI or new XML capabilities.

So my question is why the BusinessCard has a mandatory ReceiverParty

in it, and why it does not have a DigitalCollaboration object? I

am here looking for a rational or definition objectives. It was

presumably added for a good reason/purpose, is that documented anywhere?

The Recipient is mandatory because of course the UBL BusinessCard is intended to be exchanged (e.g. to a provider, bank, partner, ...)
In case the Recipient acts on behalf of another party you can use the BusinessParty information accordingly.

The UBL 2.2 Draft says:-

>>>

2.3.8.2 Business Card

The Business Card allows a standardized way of presenting digital trading

capability information in a form that can be published or exchanged with

trading partners.

Yes, this seems to be uncorrect, I would remove the term "digital" in the beginning.
The only way to describe digital trading capabilities within the UBL BusinessCard is by using textual description.

The data structures have been derived from the work of ebXML CPPP, OpenPEPPOL

and other directory services initiatives.

>>>

Correct, but this should be correlated to the UBL DigitalCapabilities document.

It seems to me that is fails on two counts given this definition, firstly

the lack of DigitalCollaboration object which would enable the presentation

of digital trading capabilities, and secondly that it can not be published

to the world, it can only be exchanged with a trading partner, which should

not be necessary as if they are already UBL trading partners both sides must

already have the Party details for the other and the BusinessCard object

makes no provision for update, DigitalCapabilities/DigitalAgreement does.

Digital trading capabilities are described in terms of processes, collaborations and transactions.
You must traverse the DigitalProcess information aggregate.

Or to put it another way, what is the high level object that is

used by a Party to broadcast connection information so that others

may request communications with it? I am rather hoping that this

is not a piece of paper!

David

Let me know if you need further support.

Best regards

Roberto Cisternino
UBL ITLSC chair