RE: [ubl-lcsc] Re: [ubl-ndrsc] UN/CEFACT ATG "Generic Header" Pro ject

["Burcham, Bill" <Bill_Burcham@stercomm.com>]

Thanks for the clarification Eduardo.  If that's the case then I don't see
the big win here.  The old ebXML-ers (:-) were right when they divided the
world into messaging, document, process, agreement, regrep.  Separation of
concerns is a Good Thing.  Encapsulation is our friend.  And XML, with its
simple, regular, universal structure (the well-formed document) is perfectly
capable of supporting the combination of UBL documents as currently
architected, with whatever "generic header" structure or generic envelope
structure someone creates in the future.  

I think the notion that the generic header design must infect er affect the
document design is an artifact of pre-ebXML EDI-thought.  If you look at X12
with its mixture of transport, transaction, and document structures its
pretty easy to see that yes, if you want to inject "generic messaging
headers" in there you're gonna have to make space above the document level.
Which means you're gonna have to change the X12 standard.  Same for EDIFACT.

UBL on the other hand has no transport or transaction level information.  In
the spirit of ebXML, UBL defines only document level terms.  Therefore, the
only logical place to inject (messaging) headers would be outside the
top-level UBL elements.  That being the case, UBL can remain blissfully
decoupled from the generic header effort while fully supporting it.  No
action is required on the part of the UBL designers.

If your messaging system needs to pass on generic header information to a
back-end system, it can simply pass a document that looks like this:

<foo>
 <generic-header-container>
 ...
 </generic-header-container>
 <ubl:Order xmlns:ubl="...">
 ...
 </ubl:Order>
</foo>

-Bill

-----Original Message-----
From: Eduardo Gutentag [mailto:eduardo.gutentag@sun.com] 
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2003 11:05 AM
To: Burcham, Bill
Cc: 'A Gregory'; ubl-lcsc@lists.oasis-open.org;
ubl-ndrsc@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [ubl-lcsc] Re: [ubl-ndrsc] UN/CEFACT ATG "Generic Header" Pro
ject


I'll take the risk of answering for Arofan, since who knows when he'll
respond, given recent history ;-)

What Arofan proposes is to duplicate the envelope inside the document, plain
and simple. No only is the UBL document just added to the 
envelope, as you say, but the envelope is also added to the document.

<<munch>>