Re: Use of Country Code and Currency Code in UBL-based applications

[jon.bosak@sun.com]

Hello Tony,

I'm on a long flight from California to Toronto as I write this,
so I don't know whether someone else will have responded to your
questions before I connect again to send mail.  Please forgive me
if this duplicates some other reply sent in the meantime.

With regard to your question about codes, I am copying this
message with your orginal below to the UBL Naming and Design Rules
Subcommittee and the UBL Library Content Subcommittee.  The NDRSC
has published a paper proposing an approach to code lists in
general and will be discussing code lists at the UBL TC meeting
next week in Montreal.  I don't know whether the code list experts
in that group will be able to respond to your question until after
the meeting.  I suggest that you start monitoring the ubl-ndrsc
archive at OASIS for past and future discussions on this topic.

|    Some other questions:
| 
|    2) Also, what are are the major differences between 0.8 schemas
|    and 0.7 schemas?

UBL version 0.7 was a complete package (data models, schemas, UML
diagrams, example instances, stylesheets, etc.) released in
January for a three-month public review.  We received a great deal
of valuable input from that review, much of which was incorporated
into the UBL data models during and after the April/May UBL TC
meeting in London.

UBL version 0.8, by contrast, is a very limited release consisting
mainly of the revised data models and intended specifically for a
special review, ending this week, by three teams of business
experts.  The first team, consisting of members of the Open
Applications Group (OAGI), was tasked with a comparison of UBL and
OAGIS; the second team was tasked with a comparison of the UBL
data models and the data models of the RosettaNet Next Generation
PIP syntax; and the third team, appointed by the OASIS eGov TC,
was responsible for reviewing the UBL data models against
government e-procurement requirements.  Results from the 0.8
review will constitute the primary input to the work of the UBL
Library Content SC at next week's UBL TC meeting in Montreal.

While a fair amount of work has been going on behind the scenes
during this time to test our ability to create schemas and
stylesheets from the 0.8 data models, the result of that work is
not intended for implementation and has not been made widely
available outside of the UBL Tc.  You can expect a proper UBL
package like the 0.7 package after the TC has revised the 0.8 data
models in light of input received during the June/July review
period and has had a chance to produce corresponding schemas,
example instances, and stylesheets.  Based on our experience with
0.7, I would expect that work to take six to eight weeks following
the meeting in Montreal.

|    3) What is the ETA of UBL v. 1.0 being a committee spec or an
|    OASIS spec?

Based on the above, we should have another big release out some
time in October.  This will be the first UBL release recommended
for general implementation.  Whether it is also the one that
becomes a committee spec is up to the TC.

|    4) Is UBL most appropriate for B2B applications or B2C
|    applications? E.g., if it is designed for B2B mostly then I
|    strongly recommend that as part of 1.0 release UBL be enhanced
|    for B2C as well.

UBL is designed specifically for B2B.  Whether and how it should
be extended for B2C is an important question, but it's one that
belongs to a different phase of the effort.

Interestingly, a parallel question has arisen in the eGov TC
regarding the extension of ebXML messaging to comprehend
government-to-citizen interactions.  Initial analysis seems to
indicate that G2C requirements can in fact be met by a reasonably
scoped set of extensions to ebMS.  My intuition is that UBL can
similarly be extended for B2C, but this is nothing more than a
hunch at this point.

|    5) How many companies are planning to use this in their
|    commercial products

I have no data on that.  Companies that are serious about
implementing a specification-in-progress like UBL typically try to
keep their development plans secret at this stage, so we probably
won't find out until the implementation release is made.

Best regards,

Jon Bosak
Chair, OASIS UBL TC

   Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 00:24:45 -0700 (PDT)
   From: Tony Opatha <topatha@yahoo.com>
   Cc: jon.bosak@sun.com, mcrawford@lmi.org

   I'm using the UN ECE defined schema definitions of Currency
   Code and Country Code with UBL 0.7 Re-useable Aggregate
   Cmponents.

   Reviewing the Re-useable aggregates Country element is defined
   as:

   <xsd:element name="Country" type="CountryType"/>

   and Currency element is defined as:

   <xsd:element name="Currency" type="CurrencyCode"/>

   In a UBL enabled application if we were to use the enumerated
   code values defined in the CountryCode and/or Currency Code
   defined at UN ECE site:

   http://www.unece.org/etrades/unedocs/repository/codelists/xml/CountryCode.xsd

   http://www.unece.org/etrades/unedocs/repository/codelists/xml/CurrencyCode.xsd

   How do we initialize that enumerated value of country codes and
   currency code defined in above XSDs into instances of the
   re-useable UBL schemas for elements cat:Currency and
   cat:Country?

   Can someone give me an example of valid values of against the
   UNECE schema such that they are also valid values against the
   0.7 re-useable schema?

   Some other questions:

   2) Also, what are are the major differences between 0.8 schemas
   and 0.7 schemas?

   3) What is the ETA of UBL v. 1.0 being a committee spec or an
   OASIS spec?

   4) Is UBL most appropriate for B2B applications or B2C
   applications? E.g., if it is designed for B2B mostly then I
   strongly recommend that as part of 1.0 release UBL be enhanced
   for B2C as well.

   5) How many companies are planning to use this in their
   commercial products

   Thank you very much and best of luck.