Re: Online UBL validator?

[jon.bosak@sun.com]

[david.lyon@computergrid.net:]

| We are in the middle of producing a UBL validator/testpad so we
| haven't made it publicly available yet.
| 
| It's written in Perl and does a wide variety of tests on
| documents. The basic idea is that it would be able to scrutinise a
| trading partners documents for compliance to the specifications.
| 
| Our plan is to release the tool as shareware in the next month or
| so.

David,

This is exactly the kind of tool we need to make UBL practical,
and I'm glad to see the ubl-dev list beginning to function as a
place for sharing this sort of information.  As your examples
show, real-life applications need to do a lot of "business
validation" beyond the "schema validation" provided by the UBL
schemas.  It will be interesting to see the various approaches
that emerge to accomplish this.

| If anything, UBL needs way more tools from way more people than
| it has.

I completely agree.  The more, the better.

| and I sometimes get the impression that there is a lot of
| negative encouragement given to anybody outside of the
| oasis banner, as if to say, leave it to the big boys, we'll
| take care of it. Whatever....

Please don't take the comments of any particular OASIS participant
as reflecting the organization as a whole.  OASIS has one of the
least hierarchical organizational structures of any major
standards body, and no chair of an OASIS TC speaks for any other
TC.  I can assure you as the chair of the UBL TC that we are
wholeheartedly supportive of efforts such as yours, and I applaud
the shareware approach you're planning to adopt for distribution
of your product.

| UBL and ebxml is struggling... can't see why....

UBL and ebXML are both continuing to steadily gain traction in the
face of heavy opposition from certain Very Large American Software
Companies.  Those of us who were privileged to watch the early
"grass roots" stages of Web adoption can see some basic
similarities here.  Just as in the case of the web, homegrown
products such as yours will play an essential role in deploying
these user-oriented technologies.  Keep up the good work!

Jon