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Subject: Re: [ubl-comment] Question about the BusinessCard object
Comments inline, not sure how readable this will be, if you can not tell what I have added please let me know. My mail client handles text embedded conversations well, but rich text ones (like this one) seem badly handled.
David
On Tuesday, 10 October 2017 19:57:04 BST JAVEST by Roberto Cisternino wrote:
Il 10/10/2017 11:09, David Goodenough ha scritto:
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. I understand your point, but the UBL-BusinessCard is not only a card, it is primarly a message.
If it primarily a message, what the receiver do with it, and how would they reply?
Why exclude the concept (as defined in its purpose description) of a broadcast object which can be sent to anyone without tailoring. Such broadcast objects have a real use in such cases as starting the whole communications system.
I see to need to include the recipient data in a broadcast object.
How can the recipient be added when downloading it from a web site or from a QR code printed in a physical directory? Or are you saying that I would have to fill in all my Party data in order to download the BusinessCard froma web site? This would an error prone process and rather defeats one of the driving features of UBL which is to eliminate duplicate typing. I could not upload my pre-populated BusinessCard because it would not have a receipient Party in it.
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. First of all I fix the name that is singular "UBL-DigitalCapability", my mistake on the previous mail.
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? BusinessCard should not be mixed with the DigitalCollaboration, the second one is strictly for configuring EDI systems.
Perhaps not, but it is needed as part of the process of introducing two businesses to each other, at at least it could be used to good effect if it were a broadcast object.
>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. >The data structures have been derived from the work of ebXML CPPP, OpenPEPPOL and other directory services initiatives. It should be:
2.3.8.3 Digital Capability The Digital Capability allows a standardized way of presenting digital trading capability information in a form that can be published or exchanged with trading partners. The digital capabilities of business partners are the source for building a Digital Agreement.
2.3.8.4 Digital Agreement (...I JUST RENUMBERED THIS...) Bi-lateral and multi-lateral trading partner agreements can make use of the standardized Digital Agreement document used to support business parties agreeing on a set of digital processes, terms and conditions.
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. It is true that in the specification there is a missing graph overview for the BusinessCard document, while the graph for the Digital Agreement and Digital Capability is correct.
Not at all sure this makes sense. The whole point of UBL is to make as many parts of business interaction digital, it is the definition of how that digital interaction should occur and how the dataflows should be structured. Why is UBL defining a non-digital object? The useful thing to do is to use the Business Card concept and extend it into the digital world and the concept is to broadcast information.
David
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
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