Summary of my confusion in 0.80 vis-a-vis London decisions

["G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com>]

Good morning CSC members,

Per yesterday's CSC meeting, I would like to summarize my perspective on a 
very confusing situation in which I find myself regarding migrating FPSC 
work from 0.70 to 0.80.  I've been on the critical path waiting for 0.80 
schemas to begin the next phase of FPSC work by team members.

Leaving London I was under the impression I would need to abandon my 0.70 
approach to stylesheet modularization based on the Local/Global decision 
that practically every element would have a unique type in order to support 
database applications and other type-based systems, including the yet to be 
standardized XSLT/XPath 2.0 family of standards based on W3C Schema.

XSLT/XPath 1.0 are not based on W3C Schema but are based on XML and 
Namespaces, thus being a "pure" XML application of label-based 
processing.  This is what 0.70 was based on and what I was hoping to base 
0.80 on.

In discussions with Eduardo, I gathered that the 0.70 practice of:

   <xsd:element name="BuyerParty" type="cat:PartyType" />
   <xsd:element name="FreightForwarderParty" type="cat:PartyType" />

which would produce a common set of labels as defined by the single 
PartyType for the components of the parties, was being abandoned.  I 
understood that the global/local decision would produce unique types for 
each label (with the documented exception of @ID and @CODE) with results 
along the lines of (modulo namespaces):

   <xsd:element name="BuyerParty" type="cat:BuyerPartyPartyType" />
   <xsd:element name="FreightForwarderParty"
                type="cat:FreightForwarderPartyType" />

... thus requiring me to abandon my 0.70 approach to modularization and 
start from scratch redesigning my XSLT/XPath 1.0 stylesheets to be 
type-based and not label-based.

I can accept this decision since I had my opportunity to voice my 
opposition (though surprisingly to me in London I was ruled out of order 
expressing the issue as it was deemed irrelevant to the discussion).

When the 0.80 draft 3 schemas arrived this week, I was surprised to see 
common types being used in the same pattern as was used in 0.70 which I 
documented here:

   http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl-lcsc/200306/msg00052.html

For some reason I do not see in the archives the following response that I 
received from Chee-Kai, even though LCSC is cc'ed on it:

>Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 23:52:56 +0800 (SGT)
>From: Chin Chee Kai <cheekai@StanfordAlumni.org>
>To: "G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com>
>cc: UBL LCSC <ubl-lcsc@lists.oasis-open.org>
>Subject: Re: [ubl-lcsc] Agenda the next meeting of the UBL 
>Library  Content subcommittee to be held on TUESDAY 24th June between 8 
>and  10a.m  California time
>
>This isn't so much of a global/local issue than a type-reuse issue.
>
>The type-reuse mechanism (what you described as "single type
>for all parties") was carried over from the 0.80 spreadsheets'
>model change to reuse more types that are literally exact
>copies with different names when they were in 0.70 (as you
>pointed out).  I think there was no position change from
>the London meeting on encouraging type-reuse.
>
>Hope this helps.
>
>
>Best Regards,
>Chin Chee-Kai
>SoftML

In response to the above note, I started a thread attempting to clarify the 
issue, because his final sentence is the *opposite* of what I remember from 
the London meeting:

   http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl-lcsc/200306/msg00054.html

Chee-Kai's response echoed for me what were many of my own arguments in 
London against the changes I perceived were happening:

   http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl-lcsc/200306/msg00056.html

I summarized my London misconceptions in the new light of Chee-Kai's 
explications and concluded my thread here:

   http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl-lcsc/200306/msg00058.html

My objective in bringing this up in the CSC meeting was to (1) apologize to 
Jon and others in UBL for my technical arguments in London being unfounded, 
(2) I was hoping that Eduardo would have been at the meeting in order to 
raise in discussion his points to me in London that led me to conclude the 
opposite of what Chee-Kai has been reflecting in the schema expressions, 
thus perhaps helping others who heard our arguments in London better 
understand what is going on, and (3) ask what documents would give me a 
better summary of the local/global issues as applied to UBL so I can be in 
a better position to describe the issue to others.

Not being a member or lurker of NDRSC I didn't track the discussions on the 
fly and so was hoping there might be a summary document somewhere I can 
cite in my descriptions of the situation.

So, it would seem that my FPSC 0.80 work is a lot more progressed than I 
thought it would be now that I can base a lot of the work on my 0.70 
results, and I can progress the critical path of FPSC with the Draft 3 
schemas as delivered by Chee-Kai.

I apologize for my confusion and I hope the above has helped 
others.  Thanks for your patience with me.

..................... Ken


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