UBL v2 Rev - #2

[Chin Chee-Kai <cheekai@softml.net>]

I thought I'd like to just mumble some words before I go on with
UBL v2 review comments...   

For a company who's been awarded plenty of credits and appreciation
for helping to generate v1.0 & v2.0 schemas by TC, it's probably 
saddening or disappointing for members to learn that they've actually 
been thought of as simple-minded technically-incompetent people.  

As an individual who's helped in UBL v1.0-beta's schema generation, I
faced no less pressure and frustration at that time either.  Yet, I
thought it was due to the collective members' differences in opinions
that had resulted in a grand final beta product that best matched
everyones' interests.  Every contributing members' expertise, concerns
or ideas in even orthogonal aspects helped.  If everyone participating
only focused on technical XML, it'd really weaken UBL than what little
merit it may get in quickly generating a XML-compliant schema set that
deals scarcely with the concerns of all members.   I can empathize with
people who might be locked in the crunch time now with various 
deadlines, versions, data, opinion, changes etc to deal with.  But
I humbly ask that volunteers do voluntary work happily and professionally,
and if you can't feel happy about doing it, then do something else.

Also, some wind blew words in me that someone remarked that Tim McGrath
"thinks he is an expert".  I hope whoever made that remark would
care to read about his contributions, publications, background,
his patient attitude towards explaining somewhat complex concepts
to newcomers especially from Asia countries, his persistence and
relentless commitment to attend various meetings at even far eastern
countries, and his boldness in bringing UBL's benefits to Asian
and European countries whose hosting organisations have held kind
regards of him.   If I'm making all this up, I'm sure I'd be flamed
very soon.  But I'd stand here ready to be flamed as I need to correct
whoever said those words in quotes.

Alright, let me continue...



Below refers to UBL v2 working draft package at Jon's URL

   http://ibiblio.org/bosak/ubl/wd-UBL-2.0.zip

- It is mentioned in "index.html" Appendix D that UBL's NDR 2.0 
  "will be released as part of UBL 2.0 publication".  If there are
  differences detected in this working draft schema set, it would
  be very difficult for us on ubl-dev to check whether it is a 
  deliberate difference due to changes in NDR 2.0, or due to 
  schema generation problems, or editing, or other possible 
  sources.   NDR does directly, and sometimes significantly, affect
  how schemas are constructed from the model spreadsheets.  

  So without NDR 2.0's availability, it seems to make our public 
  review more a reading appreciation than actual checking on the 
  quality/correctness.


- File "wd-UBL-2.0.pdf", the PDF version of "index.html", appears
  to have many of its diagrams cut off on their right.  In addition,
  other than the unwanted "<?xml version=....>" stuff on the 
  first page first line and the "Copyright 00A9; 2001-2005 OASIS..."
  on the last page first line, some of the relative hyperlinks
  such as those pointing to xsd and xls  don't work (when clicked,
  browser points to C:\d\ubl\2\mod\lib\UBL-CommonLibrary-2.xls",
  for instance).


- For CoreComponentParameters-2.xsd, there appears to be a dangling
    <xsd:element name="Instance" type="InstanceType" />
  The InstanceType is also defined and used by this dangling element
  defintion, so that InstanceType is also dangling.



- In the model spreadsheet, there are many columns of "Small Business
  Subset ..." (columns AF to AW).  And some of these cells have "Y"
  as data.  Since XSDs are the only normative product of UBL v2, should
  it not be the case that these SBS column values are transported and
  stored into XSD's documentation tags?  Otherwise those values might
  be lost in the spreadsheets which are "non-normative".




Best Regards,
Chin Chee-Kai
SoftML
Tel: +65-6820-2979
Fax: +65-6743-7875
Email: cheekai@SoftML.Net
http://SoftML.Net/