RE: [ubl-dev] Customizing where 'Simpler-Than-UBL' (STU) is needed

["G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com>]

At 2007-02-09 11:49 -0700, David RR Webber \(XML\) wrote:
>Ken and Steve,
>
>This is indeed an interesting moment in time and space.
>
>Let me try and summarize and unravel the XML knot here.
>
>1) UBL is defined as a set of XSD schemas - to which things have to be
>conformant.
>
>2) Payloads are in XML format
>
>3) Steve has a subset that uses the same UBL entities and constructs and
>approach as the regular schemas
>     (the Lego bricks if we will)
>
>Now - Conformant is driven by 1) - however something may be Compatible
>with 1) - e.g. using 3) if there is a simple transformation that can be
>applied that renders 2) as something that will pass 1).

There is no committee definition for "compatible" and the user 
community will not understand the nuances if we try to define such a 
thing.  At present a UBL instance is very well defined:  it is UBL if 
it does not violate the constraints expressed in the published XSD 
Schema expression.

>I believe that is what we are seeing here - not strict conformance - but
>compatible with - hence its UBL-ish -while not being exactly UBL as per
>the v2.0 XSD.

Yes, that's exactly what we are seeing, which is downright 
scary!  How is our user community to know the nuances?  We cannot go 
around saying that

>However - I think Steve's point is that its still in the spirit of and
>compatible with UBL since its using all the same "Lego" - but just is
>simpler for people to do 2) - and handle the XML payloads.  From the
>CCTS stance of course - Steve is correct - the XML is just a rendering
>- so being compatible with the CCTS model of UBL can take many forms -
>even EDI instances!?!?

False.  UBL is formally described by a set of W3C Schemas.  The 
method by which those schemas was derived may have been from an 
abstract model that can be concretely expressed in many possible 
ways, but none of those other ways can be called "UBL" in any fashion.

Sorry, I'll stop standing on my soapbox after answering the latest 
series of questions, but I'll get back on when people start calling 
things "UBL" that violate the published W3C Schemas.  If I don't, and 
nobody else does, then our user community will get confused and misled.

"UBL-ish" and "UBL-like" instances cannot be exposed at the 
interchange level ... do whatever you want behind the curtain, I 
don't care, but if the markup gets exposed to users it cannot be 
called UBL unless it passes the published document vocabulary constraints.

This has happened before by vendors of tools that were not conformant 
being less than forthcoming with their users and their users getting 
very confused.

. . . . . . . . . . . . Ken


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