A 'Lite' Profile for UBL

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

G Ken Holman and I (and more recently some of those at CSW's XML Summer School

2004) have considered aspects of meeting small and medium-sixed businesses'

requirements for a lightweight profile of, say, the two main documents - order and

invoice - of UBL.

 

Here are some starting design considerations for 'UBL-Lite':

 

a.  A profile independant of context (in the CCTS sense) so that adoption is a matter

     of choice and not of context. Calling it small-business profile might tie it too much

     to small businesses and imply that users of it are determined as such by their

     business size. Connecting it to a context by the CCTS mechanism may make it

     difficult for users who aren't actually in that context but still wish to use it. For

     example, I think it might be ideal for local government authorities to use but these

     would not call their context 'small business' (there might be legal implications to prevent

     them from doing so perhaps).

 

b.  The idea is to produce a minimal subset of the essentials of an order and invoice while

     keeping the instances valid according to the normative UBL Schemas.

 

c.  It is not clear how this can be specified using schemas (e.g. those of the DSDL

     - XML Schema, RELAX-NG or Schematron)

 

d.  It may therefore be necessary to use another approach, prose or better.

 

e.  The final definition/spec may need to be recognisable by audit bodies and legal bodies

     so it may need to be normative and for this, if the schema languages aren't used, the

     need may be there to produce the spreadsheet models as in UBL now (which can be

     adapted to define the profile) in a well-defined and accepted XML format.

 

 It was suggested, (thanks Eve) and I favour this, to use a 'deprecation/recommendation' 

 approach. This could be achieved by adding to the spreadsheets of UBL (Ken and I choose

 to start with the cut-down versions used by the Localization Sub Committees for translation

 work) an extra column which adds to each and every BIE (row) one of two designations

 'Deprecated' and 'Recommended'. There are then two rules to say

 

     1.  A 'Deprecated' BIE MAY be ignored

     2.  A 'Recommended' BIE MUST NOT be ignored

 

This means that an application may be able to cater for more than the subset but need not have to.

On the other hand, an application can send a document knowing that the receiving application, if

it has requested or agreed to UBL-Lite documents, is agreeing not to ignore the subset. There

may be no need to refrain from sending data outside of that in the subset but with the understanding

that it may be ignored, plus agreement may be made separately to not ignore some of it but as an

additional feature (perhaps for special arrangements).

 

For example, Credit Card details might be left out of the profile for an order (that remains to be seen

but my own prototype 0.1 excludes them) as being outside of the essential minimal requirements

but if a company wishes to send them to a trading partner who uses 'UBL-Lite' they can contact the

receiving company and seek special arrangements to include them. Applications might include

exception reporting to say that data outside of the profile is included; then there might be the means

for the 'source' XML to be viewed and appropriate action taken by a clerk.

 

I hope there is scope on this list to develop these models and the resulting UBL-Lite profiles as a

community work, perhaps ongoing, until they can be submitted, say, to the UBL TC or whatever

OASIS process is deemed appropriate in due course. 

 

I'll send the prototype (version 0.1) in another e-mail (size, etc, permitting).

 

Below is an extract of the invoice profile prototype which I'd propose as a starting point (it does not include the

BIEs defined in the 'reusable' model):

[Note that this is based on the committee draft of UBL 1.0 so it might need to updated for the specification release]

 

 

No.	UBL Name	Dictionary Entry Name	Representation Term	Cardinality	Component Type	Business Terms	Deprecated [D] / Recommended [R]	Definition	Examples
1	Invoice	Invoice. Details			ABIE		R	the document that describes the financial commitment of the Order
2	ID	Invoice. Identifier	Identifier	1	BBIE		R	the unique number assigned to the invoice by the seller (invoicer)
3	CopyIndicator	Invoice. Copy. Indicator	Indicator	0..1	BBIE		R	Indicates whether a document is a copy (true) or not (false)
4	GUID	Invoice. Globally Unique_ Identifier. Identifier	Identifier	0..1	BBIE		R	a computer generated unique identifier for the document, which is guaranteed to be unique
5	IssueDate	Invoice. Issue Date. Date	Date	1	BBIE		R	the date when the invoice was issued
6	InvoiceTypeCode	Invoice. Invoice Type. Code	Code	0..1	BBIE		R	identifies the type of the Invoice by a code.
7	Note	Invoice. Note. Text	Text	0..1	BBIE		R	contains any free form text pertinent to the entire document or to the document message itself. This element may contain notes or any other similar information that is not contained explicitly in another structure.
8	TaxPointDate	Invoice. Tax Point Date. Date	Date	0..1	BBIE		R	the date of the invoice for tax purposes, in accordance with the applicable tax regulation.
9	InvoiceCurrencyCode	Invoice. Invoice Currency. Code	Code	0..1	BBIE		D	the currency in which the Invoice is presented. This may be the same currency as the pricing or as the tax.
10	TaxCurrencyCode	Invoice. Tax Currency. Code	Code	0..1	BBIE		D	the currency in which the tax on the Invoice is presented. This may be the same currency as the pricing or as the Invoice itself.
11	PricingCurrencyCode	Invoice. Pricing Currency. Code	Code	0..1	BBIE		D	the currency in which the prices are specified. This may be the same currency as the Invoice itself or as the tax.
12	LineItemCountNumeric	Invoice. LineItem Count. Numeric	Numeric	0..1	BBIE		D	the number of line items
13	OrderReference	Invoice. Order Reference	Order Reference	0..n	ASBIE		R	Provides a means of associating an Invoice with one or more Orders
14	DespatchDocumentReference	Invoice. Despatch_ Document Reference	Document Reference	0..n	ASBIE		D	Provides a means of associating an Invoice with one or more Despatch Advices
15	ReceiptDocumentReference	Invoice. Receipt_ Document Reference	Document Reference	0..n	ASBIE		D	Provides a means of associating an Invoice with one or more Receipt Advices
16	AdditionalDocumentReference	Invoice. Additional_ Document Reference	Document Reference	0..n	ASBIE		D	Provides other means of identifying an Invoice
17	BuyerParty	Invoice. Buyer Party	Buyer Party	1	ASBIE		R	associates the invoice with information about the buyer involved in the transaction.
18	SellerParty	Invoice. Seller Party	Seller Party	1	ASBIE		R	associates the invoice with information about the seller involved in the transaction.
19	Delivery	Invoice. Delivery	Delivery	0..n	ASBIE		R	associates the overall invoice with the details of a delivery (or deliveries)
20	PaymentMeans	Invoice. Payment Means	Payment Means	0..1	ASBIE		R	associates the invoice with the expected means of payment.
21	PaymentTerms	Invoice. Payment Terms	Payment Terms	0..n	ASBIE		D	associates the invoice with the payment terms applicable/offered.
22	AllowanceCharge	Invoice. Allowance Charge	Allowance Charge	0..n	ASBIE		R	associates the invoice with an overall charge or allowance.
23	ExchangeRate	Invoice. Exchange Rate	Exchange Rate	0..1	ASBIE		D	associates the invoice with an exchange rate. In any one invoice there is only one exchange rate needed, either between invoicing at tax currency, or between pricing and invoice totalling.
24	TaxTotal	Invoice. Tax Total	Tax Total	0..n	ASBIE		R	associates the invoice with summary information for a particular tax.
25	LegalTotal	Invoice. Legal Total	Legal Total	1	ASBIE		R	associates the invoice with a set of totals required for the invoice to be a legal document.
26	InvoiceLine	Invoice. Invoice Line	Invoice Line	1..n	ASBIE		R	an invoice has one or more invoice lines

 

 

All the best

 

Stephen Green