Re: [ubl-dev] A 'Lite' Profile for UBL

["Stephen Green" <stephen_green@bristol-city.gov.uk>]

Pedro

Thanks for these comments. The main question is: Did you cater for
integration with a back-office finance system? This is the main
factor UBL Lite addresses. Electronic messages have some value
even without back-office integration but it's debatable whether that
value would cover the cost of the XML development. What gives a good
business case is the elimination of rekeying into an existing finance system.

The point is that finance systems (finance packages) have limited ability
to process data once it is thrown at them. If my package can only receive
and, more importantly, store and send back out, discount at header level,
some clever progamming would be required of the integrator to handle
line level discount and there is a limit to how much of that clever programming
a software company can afford to put into its low-end products.

The most strightforward/common sense answer seems to many to be to
apply restricted functionality support to the message.

If you have a better answer I'd seriously think think about patenting it before
telling us! :-)  But we'd love to hear it anyway :-)

All the best

Stephen Green


>>> Pedro Alves <pmalves@think.pt> 24/08/04 12:19:48 >>>
On Mon, Aug 23, 2004 at 10:11:59PM +0100, Stephen Green wrote:
> 
> Comments? Objections?
> 
> I'd be especially interested in hearing from developers of lightweight business apps covering muliple
> localities e.g. EU and North America or EU and Asia or Asia and South America. Remember this is a subset
> of UBL so it cannot cater for requirements not catered for by the full UBL documents. Anything required
> for inclusion in UBL 1.1 but not in UBL 1.0 would have to wait for a UBL Lite profile for UBL 1.1


    Hello. 

    I didn't follow the beginning of this discussion, so please excuse me
if I misunderstood something.

    Me and my team developed a message broker that as already been released
(my many thanks to many of the participants of this list) and that uses UBL
internaly as the central point for all message types that are processed.

    We are from Portugal and I may say that it was not straightforward to
apply the ubl schemas to the business rules applied here. I'm not even sure
that all cases were filled, but since it's only for "internal use" (which I
hope will change in the future as more entities adopt UBL) I got arround
with no major drawbacks.

    My point is... If it was hard to map Portugal business rules to  UBL 1, I
would never go to an UBL lite. The documentation is well structured, and has
good, simple examples. Performance is excelent, we had no need for anything
more "light".  Is it for micro devices support? I never worked with this ones,
I cannot tell about performance in such devices.

    Looking from where I am (far, far away...) and seeing only a little
part of the hole picture, a lite or whatever version sounds more like a
division than a add-on.


    Now, correct me if I am wrong (which I might :) )


    Pedro Alves