Re: [ubl-dev] looking for practical examples

[Alexander Whillas <whillas@gmail.com>]

Yes,

I think your onto something Steve.

2009/2/10 G. Ken Holman <gkholman@cranesoftwrights.com>:
> At 2009-02-10 17:04 +0000, Stephen Green wrote:
>>
>> I'm not completely convinced though that UBL is the ideal tool for the
>> job in hand with this stock tracking system.
>
> Good point, Steve, and one I'd lost track of in thinking about the markup.
>
> Alex, you originally asked for a Catalogue document, but I had to concoct
> bogus information to complete the requirements such as provider and
> receiver.

Yes, the provider/receiver example was out of context for my
requirements as is distoring the <MinimumOrderQuantity> to fit the
inventory level (althought this would be functioanlly equivalent in my
situation).

I originally thought Catalogue was what I was after as this it what
its called in the rag-trade and in the online shop. It does cover 95%
of what I need it to do.


>> On the other hand I do have sympathy for Ken's proposal that basing the
>> business object on XML conforming to the UBL schema will add some value.

The main value would be that the 2 seperate software systems i.e.
OpenSource online shop and a proprietary inventory management system
could be independently replaced by another system if that other system
spoke UBL.


> Perhaps you need something like:
>
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
> <Inventory xmlns:cbc=
> "urn:oasis:names:specification:ubl:schema:xsd:CommonBasicComponents-2"
>           xmlns:cac=
> "urn:oasis:names:specification:ubl:schema:xsd:CommonAggregateComponents-2"
>           xmlns="urn:x-Whillas:Inventory">
>  <cbc:IssueDate>2009-02-10</cbc:IssueDate>
>  <cac:InventoryItem>
> ...
>  </cac:InventoryItem>
> </Inventory>

I was rather hoping not to have to write my own document schema, which
gave birth to my hunt for an existing standard after reading this:
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/01/08/No-New-XML-Languages

> Then, having used the same business objects, it would be easy to create a
> catalogue when a catalogue is needed.
>
>> I just think that that value might not be so obvious or so great when no actual
>> document output or input is immediately envisiaged (at this stage).
>
> But I think there are to be documents, Steve:
>
> At 2009-02-09 18:09 +0100, Alexander Whillas wrote:
>>
>> I joined this list as I'm thinking of using UBL 2.0 to do
>> importing/exporting interface to the popular ecommerce software
>> Ubercart (www.ubercart.org) and was hoping to find some examples of
>> how to use UBL for a catalog import (to begin with).
>
> Alex, what were you going to do with these documents exported from Ubercart?

Yes, these documents are not for internal use (or the joy of XML) but
for inter communication between two systems.

>  What other tools would be using this information being exported?

As I noted before I'm integrating Ubercart with legacy
inventory/POS/fulfilment system that my client is using globally.

> Are other tools creating XML to be imported into Ubercart?

Yes, this inventory is coming from that other system, which i will
call 'Cobol' for convenience from now on, which at the moment is in
CSV format. I've convinced the author of this system to try XML as it
can handle changes in the format better (say a new column) and for all
the other reason you use XML. He's asked me to provide an example of
the XML format to send me.

I'll also be sending him Order information for fulfilment. He'll send
me regular inventory updates as well as new Catalogue items to sell.

alex