Wimbledon, tennis court markings and subsets

[Stephen Green <stephen.green@documentengineeringservices.com>]

While Wimbledon 2009 was on the telly I was struck
by the tennis court design with its lines down the sides
whereby one set of demarkations are used for single
matches and the other for doubles. I realised that this

was what I had kind of hoped for for UBL and now all
the more so for UN/CEFACT documents: that the needs
of smaller uses of the documents be demarkated within
the standards for the documents themselves (like the

lines for singles games being on the same standard
tennis court design as the doubles games lines), and
not be required as extra work outside of the standard.
That was what I was reaching toward when requesting

a small business subset for UBL but not what I got
when we had to create the subset as a separate 
deliverable (not even standard - just specification).
How nice it would be if when we were given the schemas
they already came with a simple usage subset somehow
combined with the superset such that  could easily
choose to use the one rather than the other - just as
easily as knowing that because my tennis game is
singles I use the inner side lines on the tennis court and

everyone knows that this is what the tennis standard
rules require. Are we as clever as the tennis court
designers? Maybe not. Pity. Maybe not *yet* anyway.
---
Stephen D Green
Document Engineering Services Ltd