Re: [ubl-dev] problem cardinality

["G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com>]

At 2010-11-03 16:00 +0100, elisa blasi wrote:
>thanks for the reply even if not everything is clear to me.
>First what do you mean with the statement '... that "choice" 
>constructs would not be used when expressing the spreadsheets as 
>schema constraints', to which spreadsheet are you referring to?

The modeling spreadsheets ... where the business experts in UBL 
decide what belongs in each document.  The schemas are not written by 
hand.  They are synthesized by reading the spreadsheets.

The spreadsheets for UBL 2.0 are here:

   http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/os-UBL-2.0-update/mod/

The spreadsheets for UBL 2.1 PRD1 are here:

   http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/prd1-UBL-2.1/mod/

>I understand the UBL schemas have to support all general cases and 
>that it's up to the interacting partners to define constraints and 
>rules. In my question I was simply highlighting that, even if 
>reasonable that the 2 indicated elements have a cardinality 0-1, at 
>the least of them has to be present otherwise, to my understanding, 
>the UBL document would have no recipient. Did I correctly understand?

The recipient of the message is whoever receives the document.  That 
you are reflecting that recipient in the content of the message is up 
to you the user.  There is nothing in UBL that imposes constraints on 
a message forwarding system to inspect the UBL document to find who 
the recipient is.  Though, of course, a message forwarding system can 
choose to have such a constraint.

If in your situation you mandate one of the two, then impose that 
constraint after the fact.

If another UBL user chooses not to fill in either value and the 
recipient of the message is simply the person who finds it in their 
email inbox, that is that user's prerogative.  Though it may not sit 
well within the community in which they are sending their documents.

Note, though, that my answer is a techie's answer ... I'm just the 
angle-bracket guy ... it was up to the business experts in UBL to 
determine what the fields are in the document and what their 
cardinality is.  They reflected their decisions in the 
spreadsheets.  The schemas reflect the spreadsheets.

I hope this helps.

. . . . . . . . . . . . Ken


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