Re: [ubl-dev] UBL and CCTS: Improvement interoperability ?

[Danny Gaethofs <dgaethofs@yahoo.com>]

Mark,
You may not lead the UN/CEFACT effort but SAP members yourselve and Gunther are chairmen of the ATG and TMF, chair of the CCTS standard and Core Component harmonization project. There is of course someone that has to take the lead and I appreciate the effort SAP is putting into it.

As you stated it could be disappointing for several standards organization hearing that they only partially comply to the CCTS but one could ask the question whether all these SDOs, governments, private sector companies and solutions providors are willing to give up their approaches, their knowledg base in favor of interoperability.
Is it really the only approach to reach interoperability ? That of course for me is the biggest question, there are several other initiatives UDEF, NIEM, ...
Those of you that are aware of other initiatives I personally would like to hear them . I am looking for the best mixed of all of them .
kind regards
Danny Gaethofs

----- Original Message ----
From: "Crawford, Mark" <mark.crawford@sap.com>
To: Danny Gaethofs <dgaethofs@yahoo.com>; ubl-dev@lists.oasis-open.org
Sent: Friday, June 20, 2008 8:36:17 AM
Subject: RE: [ubl-dev] UBL and CCTS: Improvement interoperability ?

> 
> I have been following the developments of the CCTS groups 
> lead by the SAP people for more than a year.

Please note that CCTS is not an SAP lead effort.  It is a UN/CEFACT led
effort in which many SDOs, governments, private sector companies and
solutions providors (SAP, Oracle)participate.

> I have from the beginning been trying to understand how this 
> improves interoperability between two communication partners, 
> standards and systems.

CCTS is about creating semantic interoperability.  It is not targeted at
information exchanges between two of anything.  It is targeted at
created universal semantic interoperability of business information
through a single ubiquituous conceptual data model and contextualized
logical data models.  The power of CCTS is such that this
interoperability can be applied at any level - organizational,
enterprise, industry, cross-industry.


> What is the status of implementing CCTS within UBL and / or OASIS ?

UBL is built on CCTS from the ground up.  It is mostly conformant with
CCTS. They only have a logical - not conceptual - data model (No core
components). OASIS is an umbrella organization who facilitates
independent standards development and this structure is such that the
concept of CCTS implementation is not appropriate. A bigger question is
what is the status of implementing CCTS.  UN/CEFACT has implemented it.
OAGi has implemented part and is developing a transition plan for full
implementation. It has been used by the US government in a number of
projects - as well as by other governments around the world.  Private
companies have begun to implement it for their logical data base
structures.  SAP is using it for defining their global data types which
are used in their service definitions.  Oracle is doing the same.

Kind Regards,

Mark 
Mark Crawford 
SAP Standards Architect
Global Ecosystem and Partner Group 
Office: 703 670-0920 
Mobile: 703 485-5232