Re: [ubl-dev] Creating a new document... where to start?

["Stephen Green" <stephen_green@seventhproject.co.uk>]

Ken

I thought your advice to Jeffrey was just the sort of advice I'm after
for defining a small business profile without necessarily wishing to have
any side affects on instances beyond defining a convenient, proposed
standard subset of UBL suitable for small finance apps and spreadsheet
accounting systems while allowing the small businesses the benefit of having
the standard 'vanilla' UBL namespaces and all the legal standing that may be
attached to these in their trading documents.

Given then, obviously, that the proposed small business profile would be
a much more radical restriction of UBL orders, invoices and perhaps other
documents than the restriction of a codelist Schema down to one code,
what would be your advice about using XSD, Relax and/or Schematron
to define such a subset?

The main factors to consider might be the following:

1. the definition of this subset might be the primary requirement and
validation
secondary (perhaps, what do others think?)

2. the instances should still primarily be valid against unchanged UBL
normative Schemas (hence the same namespaces)

3. the definition should be worthy of being considered normative

4. the objective is to provide a standard profile, widely accepted in
software design such that software of larger businesses can send messages
taylored quite generally to small businesses' needs

5. ultimately there might be a context attached to such a profile such that,
as
Chee-Kai pointed out, context-aware software can recognise, say in ebXML
CPAs
or the WS equivalents, the need to send documents which comply with the
specified profile so that the receiving software can understand the message
(this, I guess, could be added at a later stage so if it does require XSD,
it need
not mean that an alternative means be used at this stage in defining the
subset)

6. this is a radical pruning of the whole UBL model with the emphasis on
simplification
and limited functionality software or tools

7. hopefully we won't have to resort to a prose spec or just have to define
the subset
with a spreadsheet or table -
something closer to what an application can read would
presumably be preferable

Sorry to be asking for the earth here. Thanks for your valiant support too
:-)

- Folks, I'd echo Ken's rallying call to see if we can devise a suitable way
to achieve
this
- I believe there are many asking for such a profile (UBL is quite complex
afterall)
and to lower the barrier to entry for small businesses to trade with
eachother and with
larger businesses with the benefit of a potentially legally acceptable
horizontal standard
would surely be of tremendously widespread benefit


Grateful for any pointers at least

Stephen Green