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

["Stephen Green" <stephengreenubl@gmail.com>]

Danny

I'm delighted to see someone discussing CCTS interoperability.
I personally (as did Mark) just did a stint on a committee in
CEFACT to discuss CCTS conformance (on hold for a little while).
Last time I heard, there isn't a conformance clause as yet for
CCTS - just a vague-ish idea that conformance means complying
with all normative statements in the spec. It would be nice to
eventually see more detail 9such as a list of testable assertions
which when taken together or in discrete modules of sets of the
assertions amount to a detailed definition of CCTS conformance.
The last time we put something together on this it was a
concensus that this work would have to go on for each part of
CCTS within the group that works on that part but there was as
yet no formal agreement on whether this was acceptable or
whether it would happen. Clearly it could be a great deal of work
for someone.

In the meantime, I'd echo that CCTS (at least in the version used
in UBL) requires nothing specific to XML as such and only
requires derivation from CCT to datatype to take place in the
modeling so no schema needs to be linked to the other schemas
which would cater for the CCTs. (see my other posting)

I'd make a quick comment about SAP involvement in CCTS just
to say that from what I remember SAP employees were not by
any means noticeable as over-representative in the discussions
that went on with regard to CCTS. They were involved a lot but
so were many others - even a few people like myself who were
self-employed or public sector (I was a bit of both as an OASIS
individual member). This is just to stress that the history doesn't
show over involvement in my view from any one company or
sector or even country (though quite a few from USA were always
involved of course). That was cool. Later there was more leadership
coming from SAP of course but by then, as far as I remember,
most of the decisions about how to represent CCTS in XML were
already made (sometimes agreed all round, other times differing
between UBL, OAGIS and ATG - then the main players I think).
Regarding CEFACT, I'd say many of the discussions on how to
put CCTS (CCTS having been written in CEFACT but by folk a
good representative number of whom were also working in OASIS
on UBL) into XML were mirrored or even conducted within UBL TC,
as far as I recollect. So it has been a well spread out effort. This
was fed back into ATG significantly at the time.

It would be great though if you'd be willing and have time to
summarise how you understand the CCTS to facilitate
interoperability. I have a bit of a feel for it but have hardly seen
it discussed or made to happen. It has only been my experience
to date to see CCTS implemented separately and now I'm about
to start some work on interoperability (perhaps you'd have a
look at the soon-to-start TC called SET in OASIS i you haven't
already) and would welcome whatever insight folk would share
about how CCTS might actually facilitate mappings, etc.

All the best
-- 
Stephen D. Green

Partner
SystML, http://www.systml.co.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 117 9541606
Associate Director
Document Engineering Services
http://www.documentengineeringservices.com

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