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Subject: ISC minutes for past two weeks
Hi, Since we have some new members I've attached the last two week's minutes. -Anne
The Pilot Implementation Subcommittee met by phone on Friday 21 November 2003, 17:00 UTC.
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?day=20&month=11&year=2003&hour=17&min=0&sec=0&p1=0
Agenda
------
1. Welcome and Introductions
2. Discussion on charter/scope/deliverables
3. Meeting schedules
4. Recruiting SC members
5. Next steps
Call-in Info:
U.S. domestic toll-free number: (866)839-8145
Int. access/caller paid number: (865)524-6352
Access code: 5705229
1. Welcome and Introductions
Bill French (Co-Chair)
Recently with Contivo. Just finished term as president of EIDX.
Worked with Bill Meadows in Sun IT and with Anne on ebXML at Sun.
Background is in B2B.
Lars Oppermann
Engineer in Hamburg driving StarOffice efforts at OASIS for Sun.
Interested in integrating UBL with SO/OO workflows (view/edit,etc).
Bill Meadows
Work on B2B messaging in Sun's IT organization. Managed EDI B2B.
Technical Editor of LCSC.
Amit Sheth
Sun IT Engineer - impelement Sun's B2B transactions.
Implemented 0p70 and 0p80 (build 13) at Sun:
UBL Invoice in beta, UBL PO in production.
Anne Hendry (Co-Chair)
Sun standards architect and project manager.
Have done engineering and RE.
Working on UBL for about a year.
Chee-Kai Chin
In UBL since about March. Wrote tool to help LCSC create schemas.
Purpose of attending is to find out what is going on and see if there
is an area where it can be linked back to the XML Industrial Project
(XIP) in Singapore.
Stephen Green
With the local UK government.
Working with the UBL model to ensure compliance with fairly simple
invoce/order requirements. Implemented extensive requirements analysis
for UK government to ensure UBL complies with the e-government review.
Ken Holman
Chair of the Forms Presentation SC which looked at UN eDocs layouts
of forms and two scenarios created in UBL. Developed formatting
specifications for these scenarios to enable UBL implementors to
develop stylehseets based on the Formatting Specification examples.
Principal of Crane Softwrights. Crane did develop stylesheets for
UBL .70 and is planning another release in December. So Ken is
wearing two hats: one as FPSC Chair, other as a stylesheet provider.
2. Discussion on charter/scope/deliverables
Thoughts to date:
Jon's announcement stated two goals for the group:
- monitor UBL actvity
- report back issues and requirements to other SCs
Additional thoughts on our charter/scope:
- foster implementations of ubl
- case studies
- marketing information
- recruit other members
- implementation frameworks
Audience:
- end users
- solution providers (software support, SIs, etc)
PISC and FPSC:
Ken explained that he is de-emphasizing the role of FPSC and
rather would like to bring FPSC discussions into the PISC forum,
since the PISC will provide multiple perspectives that will shape
the future output of the FPSC work. In essence, the FPSC is now
waiting for the PISC to generate real-life implementation
experience/expertise that can be used to improve and focus
the next phase of FPSC work.
(For more detail on this see Addendum 'About FPSC ...' below.)
PISC and Marketing:
Chee-Kai asked whether there might be overlap between the marketing
effort noted as part of the PISC charter and other TC marketing efforts.
It was agreed that 'marketing material' was a slight misnomer, and that
the PISC charter included the collation and dissemination of information
related to the implementations for the benefit of the implementors
and the other SCs (eg. best practices, FAQ, case studies, etc.)
as well as material needed to intrduce non-members to the benefits
of participating in the SC.
Name/Purpose of PISC:
Bill noted that he saw this as a user group for early implementors.
Chee-Kai stated that the name could lead one to believe the PISC
was doing an implementation. We agreed that the PISC did not have
resources itself to do implementations, although members of the
PISC may also be UBL developers and participating in that capacity.
Therefore we agreed to change the name of the SC to 'Pilot Implementors
Subcommitee' (changing 'Implementation' to 'Implementors').
AI: Anne/Bill change SC name.
Bill French described his view of the PISC as more analogous with the
classic Product Management function - focused on features, function,
and usage which would be fed back into the other subcommittees.
It was decided that LCSC would be the best SC to field general
questions on the release, while PISC should focus on specific
implementations.
Discussion ensued on the use of the new 'ubl-dev' alias.
It was agreed that 'ubl-dev' would be used in a similar way to 'xml-dev'
- as a free-form, self-sustaining discussion alias for developers of UBL.
The PISC would monitor the alias for activity that could be beneficial
to the work of the subcommittee and would invite contributors to that
forum to participate more formally as part of the PISC as needed.
The PISC would not otherwise attempt to respond to all questions/issues
raised on that list. This should be discussed with LCSC and other SCs.
PISC Implementation focus:
Chee-Kai would like to see implementations with foreign partners
- implementations that provide an end-to-end round-trip example
of a global exchange scenario showing the interoperability of
different implementations.
Anne thought that this should be kept in mind as one of the criteria
for evaluating and identifying implementations that will give us the
most return for the time we have, since we have limited resources.
Also, categorizing implementors would enable better communication
- provide more focused information gathering and dissemination.
Stephen stated that the PISC should focus on high-impact users,
such as OpenOffice, where potentially the entire world would start
using UBL as a result, since this is an open source, freely available
implementation. Other good candidates for implementation would be
large, widely-used packages, such as SAP's financial package.
Ken noted that the stylesheet library is also freely available.
It was agreed that it would bring the best return for UBL if
we focus on implementations that can be re-sued by smaller
implementors, not on implementations that only yield proprietary
solutions for large enterprises. It was noted that this
distinction is not always black-and-white, since there are
some organizations that are semi-open, and there will most
likely be several implementations of UBL web services.
However, we need to focus on open implementations that will reach
and be usable by the broadest group of implementors. We should
focus on implementations that will support use of UBL as an open,
legal standard.
Implementors:
Bill Meadows discussed Sun's work with IMPAQ. Sun/IMPAQ are now
using the UBL Order and are in Beta with Invoice. Amit raised the
issue of UBL providing schemas but the implementation requiring DTDs.
They are currently using XML Spy for conversion, which has been
so far successful. Ken suggested using Trang, an open-source
multi-format schema converter.
Interaction with other UBL SCs:
It was noted that the work of the PISC will be important to several
of the other SCs (eg. LCSC, FPSC, CLSC) and that we need a way to
maintain communication with other SCs. So far this is being
handled ad hoc.
AI: Bill French will take this input and write up draft charter.
3. Meeting Schedules
We will meet weekly on Thursdays for one hour.
[NB. Next Thursday is Thanksgiving holiday in the US, so no meeting]
Time:
3pm US Pacific
6pm US Eastern
11pm London
midnight Hamburg
7am Singapore
Call info will be the same, noted above.
This is the call number and code for all UBL meetings.
4. Recruiting SC members
Bill French suggested several ways for us to bring in early adopters
(publicize through OASIS, other SCs, individual contacts, etc).
Lars agreed to publish this to the OO community to find interested people.
Anne asked the group for information on known implemenations.
Lars discussed the OO implementation.
It is being done in two stages:
a) Using OO or SO as a viewer of UBL instances as in a paper view
b) integrated with W3C XForms to enable editing of UBL instances
and integrated into workflow for trading partners.
Stephen mentioned that in his work the first thing people have been
asking for is integration of UBL into Open Office. These are real
clerks in local government that want this. Now that it's a possiblity
Implementors are encouraged to use the list to begin to discuss their work.
5. Next steps
- Update Charter
- Set up ubl-dev list
- Follow up on possible implementors to bring into SC
- Begin documenting known users and user types
6. Other Business:
- FPSC was to set up a URL on OASIS listing known UBL stylesheet
implementations. Can this point to a page on the PISC web area instead?
The team agreed to this, since this falls somewhat within the SC's
purview of providing 'case study' information.
7. Adjourn
18:15 UTC
Addendum from charter discussion:
About the FPSC, Formatting Specifications, and Stylesheets for UBL:
It was originally thought that creating stylesheets for UBL would
be relatively quick. But there was no guidance available on UBL
presentation. This begat the FPSC with a charter to produce
formatting specifications (rather than stylesheets). With UBL Beta,
the FPSC has achieved the delivery of formally specified illustrative
(non-normative) formatting specifications. These are technology
agnostic formatting speficifcations - a stylesheet developer can
use XSLT with a common resource 'formatting spec'.
These formatting specifications are not to be viewed as groundrules.
They are guidance. The FS's were not intended to be integral for the
trading partner scenarios. They are incomplete and non-comprehensive,
purely stylesheets for the specific examples released with UBL, which
are only two scenarios out of many.
Thought now needs to go into how to take this forward into the real
scenarios hopefully provided by the PISC implementors, as they write
their own formatting specifications to make their own trading
sceenario presentable in human-readable form. The current FPs
can be used to give people a start in understanding what to do
with xml instances as they begin their implementations.
Action Items
------------
20031120-01: Bill F. write draft charter and send to team
20031120-02: Anne/Bill F. change name of subcommittee to 'Pilot Implementors SC'
20031120-03: Anne follow up on creation/purpose/use of ubl-dev list
20031120-04: Bill M. / Amit contact IMPAQ representatives to encourage to join PISC
20031120-05: Lars announce PISC to OO community
20031120-06: All send any information of current implementations to list
(or bring to next meeting)
The Implementation Subcommittee will meet by phone on Thursday 4 December 2003, 23:00 UTC.
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?day=4&month=12&year=2003&hour=23&min=0&sec=0&p1=0
#############################################
STANDING INFORMATION FOR UBL CONFERENCE CALLS
U.S. domestic toll-free number: (866)839-8145
Int. access/caller paid number: (865)524-6352
Access code: 5705229
#############################################
Agenda
------
1. Welcome, roll, minutes
2. Admin: name change, new members, mail alias, web page
3. Charter review
5. Action items review
6. Next steps - define outputs/process
7. Implementations review (continue from last meeting)
8. Other business
1. Welcome, roll, minutes
Attending: Bill French, Stephen Green, Anne Hendry, Lars Oppermann.
Current membership:
Voting members:
Bill French william.french@earthlink.net
Stephen Green stephen_green@bristol-city.gov.uk
Anne Hendry anne.hendry@sun.com
Ken Holman gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com
Amit Sheth amitkumar.sheth@sun.com
Stephen Parker sparker@impaq.co.uk
[Steve Griffiths sgriffiths@impaq.co.uk]
Lars Oppermann lars.opperman@sun.com
Non-voting members / Observers:
Chee-Kai Chin cheekai@softml.net
Dean Burson dean@traxian.com
Keith Lee keith.lee@sun.com
Bill Meadows bill.meadows@sun.com
Shin Takagi s-takagi@hitachi-system.co.jp
In process:
Stephen Kirkham stephen.kirkham@sun.com
We have quorum for today's meeting.
2. Admin: name change, new members, mail alias, web page
SC Name Change:
The SC name is now Impelentation SC - the word 'Pilot' has been dropped.
It was to be 'Implementors' rather than 'Implementation', but this change
somehow didn't make it. Anne will follow up.
Email lists:
Our new mail list is: ubl-isc@lists.oasis-open.org.
The new ubl-dev@lists.oasis-open.org will go live on December 15th.
It is being announced at XML 2003 and other venues by OASIS and UBL members.
Web page:
Our web page is up but we don't have a link to it from the UBL TC page.
Anne will follow up.
3. Charter review (see charter sent by Bill)
UBL ISC Charter Items:
1. To track progress on existing UBL implementations
Agreed.
This would entail more than just a description. In some cases
people implementing would be in the ISC and providing status
on a regular basis. For other implementors that are not part
of the ISC, proress tracking would be deinfed more broadly
(eg. in developemnt, production, etc).
Bill noted that tracking means presenting as much info as you can
- with broad brush on one hand (in development, in production, etc.)
and otherwise to to the extent we can list the details.
Lars suggested that at some point we conduct a survey to determine
what people are doing with the product - a form-based query perhaps.
Bill responded that we may want to go deeper on some, but could do
regular report. For this we will need a regular web page area.
Anne will look into getting our web page set up.
2. Provide future release feedback requirements to other UBL SC's and
to end users
Agreed.
Anne noted that we may want to generalize our communciation process
to other SCs, since we have several SCs we need to communicate with.
We will also be brokering discussions between implemetors and other SCs.
For this we can use a front-line desk scenario; ISC is the first point
of contact and LCSC could handle backline/technical responses.
3. To recruit new implementers
Agreed.
4. Act as the UBL "User Group"
Agreed.
Provide information on the Use, pitfalls, etc.
Use this to gather user requirements (users can be developers).
5. Provide case studies, ROI, and other product marketing materials to
the end user community.
Agreed.
Producing a FAQ document for includison in the umbrella FAQ.
We'll need to talk to LCSC on formatting, etc.
Stephen noted that it is time to look at increasing the UBL library
to incorporate other standards work. That UBL was intended to grow.
Bill agreed that acting as the UBL Users Group and including standards
groups as users, will help us evolve UBL. Evangelizing is part of this.
We need to discuss how to evangelize UBL in the context of this SC.
Similar to embassadors, but in both directions.
What's not in the UBL ISC Charter:
1. Be the bug reporting group for UBL
Agreed.
Bill Meadows owns handling bugs in the libary through the LCSC,
since LCSC usually is the SC that fixes the problem.
This may be different now that there are multiple SCs.
2. Be the catch-all for items that don't fit into other SC's
Agreed.
It was also agreed that the ISC target audiences are:
- end users
- product companies
- solution providers (software support, SIs, etc)
- developers
- standards organizations
Types of implementations we would like to encourage:
- high impact on adoption by end users of UBL
- high impact on standards bodies (promotion of using UBL, on convergence)
- doesn't produce an encumbered implementation
- reaches broad set of users
5. Action items review
20031120-01: Bill F. write draft charter and send to team.
Done.
20031120-02: Anne/Bill F. change name of subcommittee to 'Pilot Implementors SC'
In progress.
20031120-03: Anne follow up on creation/purpose/use of ubl-dev list
Done.
20031120-04: Bill M. / Amit contact IMPAQ representatives to encourage to join PISC
Done.
6. Next steps - define outputs/process
- descriptions of implementations
Stephen elaborated on the process he went through for his implementation.
He used Altova 'Authentic'. One caveat to using this product is that it
requires a proprietary stylesheet. Benefits are that it creates and edits
XML files in a GUI so there's no need to see the XML markup. 'Authentic'
uses Altova's 'SPS' format to import files into 'Authentic'. Drawbacks
are that you can only email the XML, so it's not as easy as proper workflow,
and that he couldn't just create the pdf from the version he had - that
would have required a more expensive version. But it did allow for the
generation of html, which was then saved as pdf.
It would be better if Altova added UBL stylesheet support to their product.
They already support Docbook and other stylesheets. There is a drop-down
menu that allows you to select from a variety of business documents and
UBL would fit well there.
Lars commented that OO version 1.1 is just starting out to look at how
UBL fits in and how it can be integrated with their workflow features.
This will be part of XForms integration since OO already has XSLT support.
OO would do a better job of generation of pdf files, although tables
can be complex at times. However, the bigger benefit with OO is that
you have the spreadsheet and can easily get from there to invoice or
order templates, or visa versa, then have a full finance package.
So ultimately with ubl you should be able to bind cells in your
spreadsheet model to actual fields in the instances of a UBL document;
the spreadsheet only represents one view of and instance.
It would be a logical next step to enable a wizard to do this for you.
Since it may not be feasible for most small business users to invest
a lot in tools, they would use a spreadsheet to produce an invoce.
Think of how many shops there are that might want to use electronic
ecommerce this way. Any solution in this space needs to be flexible
enough to let people use their imagination.
Lars asked if this is already important with a small shops?
Stephen replied that, yes, small shops already processing orders,
always sending orders and ideally they want to tie this in to their
spreadsheet. Several others chimed in that they know of people in
their daily lives - small business owners - that would love this
capability if it could be make simple and inexpensive.
Products such as QUicken/QuickBooks may support genration of invoices
but require a database technology behind the scenes, not a spreadsheet,
and is done typically using email: prodcue a document and allow someone
to send it via email. There will be hundreds of products supporting
automation at this level once UBL is ubiquitous.
- list of stylesheet implementors (get from Ken)
- case studies
- document outlining some common pitfalls with solutions
We need to create a document that helps people with their implementations
Eg. common problems to be addressed, pitfalls, best practices.
Examples of issues were uncovered during Stephen's implementation:
- too many mandatory entities
- must be able to leave things blank, but breaks ndr rules
- can't use address lines with structured address very well
These are the types of things that should go into this type of
document, but these should also go back to LCSC. We need to
agree what can be put in our document.
AI: Bill/Anne negotiate some process w/ lcsc on input from implementors.
7. Implementations review (continue from last meeting)
Open Office:
Product management has been debating where this support should go,
so this didn't ge announced last week, but this resolved and announced
today, so Lars will post the announcement to our list next week.
Stephen's Invoice scenario:
A description of this implementation was sent to the ubl list
and further described above. This is a good example of how a
small business can start automating their process. This should
be further highlighted. Bill and Stephen will re-draft the
description into a more formal paper for availability on our web site.
8. Other business
ubl-comment:
There were some comments by J Sanz sent to the ubl-comment list.
Jon has addressed one asking about a list of government agencies
or other public agencies implementing UBL. For now we have no
such list, but we should begin creating this with the information
we have to date. We shoul probably discuss the format, but for
now it can have links. Lars or Stephen volunteered for this.
Meeting time:
This time is late for Europe and doesn't seem to be good for
Chee-Kai or Tim either. We agreed to change the meeting time
for next week at least to 11:30 on Thursday (11 December).
Agenda items for next week:
- determine what we actualy report, frequency,e tc. in these charter items.
- how can we evangelize UBL in this SC to increase adoption and embracing
of other standards
Action Items
------------
20031204-01: Anne - get name update from 'Implementation' to 'Implementors'.
20031204-02: Anne - get link set up from UBL TC home page to ISC page.
20031204-03: Bill/Stephen work get Stephen's work more fully documented.
20031204-04: Lars send latest OO plans.
20031204-05: Anne look into getting our web page set up.
20031204-06: Bill French draft final charter based on today's feedback.
20031204-07: Bill/Anne negotiate process w/ LCSC on documenting feedback from implementors.
20031204-08: Anne look into FAQ format.
20021204-09: Stephen/Lars(?) begin implementors page.
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