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

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

At 07:51 AM 2007-02-09 -0800, G. Ken Holman wrote:
>At 2007-02-09 06:11 -0700, stephen.green@systml.co.uk wrote:
>>I just got to a fairly stable state with a customization of
>>the UBL Catalogue for an opensource price list product.
>
>I'm very sensitive to this being called "a customization".  The committee 
>has already defined "a customization" and an instance of a customization 
>must also be an instance of UBL:
>
>   http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl/200606/msg00095.html
>
>An instance with no namespace or only one namespace is not an instance of 
>UBL, so I feel very strongly this cannot be called a customization.  I'm 
>investing a lot of time into what I believe the committee calls 
>"customization" and this is really muddying the waters.

Ken,

I think your insistence on proper terminology is useful here.

I'm, however, wondering if the TC could consider using another term other
than "customization" to define what it is currently defining (ie, a customized
instance must be an instance of UBL).

The reasoning is that the word "customization" actually portrays act of
deriving instances from UBL schema via a much broader means, instead of
only via subsetting as what the TC has apparently decided.  To "customize"
a UBL schema could easily and not unreasonably mean deriving variations
from UBL schema to meet one's requirements.  This could also mean adding
fields, or even changing the data types of some existing UBL fields while
retaining the element name, and so on.

I must stress that I'm not referring to why TC defines subset as its form of
"customization".  I'm only suggesting that having decided within the TC that
subsetting is officially recognized as its form of "customization", could such
an act of deriving subsets be referred to by another more stringent term,
leaving "customize" and "customization" to refer to more general means of
deriving sets (instead of subsets) originating from UBL.

The latter would be helpful to users who generally use the word 
"customization"
in this sense (and I'd say rightfully).  It would also be useful to UBL TC 
because
there is then (having introduced the new terminology) an efficient word to 
refer to
"UBL's official way of customization[wc]"  (where customization[wc] refers
to the wider context meaning of customization).

So hopefully this is still in time for consideration by the TC.

Thanks for any consideration.


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