[ubl-ndrsc] Position Paper: Modeling Roles in UBL

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

Please find attached a position paper "Modeling Roles in UBL".

 

This paper grew out of my analysis of the tag name to type name correspondence discussion we had on the last day of our recent F2F.  In the paper I attempt to put that issue to rest by exhaustive (exhausting ;-) enumeration and examination of the possibilities.

 

The position developed is that none of the 12 candidate rules are viable.

 

In the paper, starting at section 7.1 I present what I believe is a viable alternative to "anarchy" -- explicit modeling of properties and roles. I observe that properties are alluded to but never explicitly defined in the Core Components work, and that that is an important source of UBL TC's confusion. 

 

The paper makes explicit the concept of property and role and places them in relation to the other elements of the CC meta-model.  That (expanded/explicit) meta-model is related to XML schema according to the UBL NDR SC rules on page 8.

 

Upshot: even if you don't buy the value of the whole "role" concept, I believe that the analysis of tag name to type name correspondence is valuable to carry forward, as is the explicit modeling of properties in the CC meta-model (and mapping of that model to XSD according to the NDR SC rules).

draft-burcham-rolemodel-02.doc