Re: [ubl-dev] Comments on UBL-NDR 2 Versioning

[Chin Chee-Kai <cheekai@SoftML.Net>]

At 09:34 PM 2006-11-13 -0600, david.lyon@preisshare.net wrote:
>Quoting Chin Chee-Kai <cheekai@SoftML.Net>:
>
>>When I attended the recent UBL TC meeting
>>in Singapore, ...
>
>So what would you say is the current state of UBL pickup in Asia?

That's not the question I'd ask.  The question I believe one should try
to consider should be, "What would you say if there's no UBL?"
Thus, if one understands UBL to be an opportunity, one would ask
a lot of questions, drill it down and hammer it into something one
could apply in context.  That, at least, has been the many real life
project examples from around the world whose presentations I've been
hearing in meetings in Hong Kong, and more recently, in Singapore.


>My impression is that UBL is getting bigger (and therefore more
>expensive) to implement every time I look at it. Version 2 seems to be
>a real humb-dinger.

And I thought I've been hearing "bigger is better"....

I can sort of see where you're coming from, and I'd agree that
downloading all 30MB of version 2 is a psychological barrier towards
using UBL v2;  the TC should really look at offering a "model+schema"
zip.  But what I don't go along with you is that UBL v2 is
bigger so it's more expensive and bad.

Oxford dictionary is big, and getting bigger, but using it is quite
easy.  We don't want a lot of grammar rules (sorry, if any French
people are listening to this....) but we do need more vocabulary
to enrich or become specific in our conversation.

That, in essence, is what I'd draw analogy to for UBL.  In v2, it
has enlarged the business vocabulary, but hasn't grown more complex.
If you look at AddressType, for example, it's pretty much the same.
But what you have now are many more ready-made business documents
ranging from BillOfLading to CertificateOfOrigin and so on.



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