IMPT: Ongoing work items

[jon.bosak@sun.com]

As agreed in the joint UBL SC call 6 April, Tim McGrath has
generated and I have substantially edited some language for
Appendix H, Ongoing Work Items.  PLEASE REVIEW THIS LIST
CAREFULLY, as its incorporation in the 1.0 Committee Draft will
publicly commit us to a number of items of work starting at and
continuing after the meeting in Hong Kong next month.

I need to be sure that we're all on board with this, so please
respond ASAP with any additions or corrections.  I will include a
preliminary version in the next master doc build.  The formatting
will of course undergo some changes when I convert this to xhtml.

Note that the inclusion of this list in 1.0 does not prevent us
from adding other work items further on, it just alerts the UBL
community to expect possible modifications in 1.1.

Jon

==================================================================

Appendix H (Informative): Ongoing Work Items

   UBL 1.0 achieves the basic objective of the first phase of the
   UBL charter — to develop a workable standard library of
   XML business documents.  The second phase (UBL 2.0) is intended
   to produce a mechanism for the automatic generation of
   context-specific business schemas.

   Between these milestones lie a number of work items that for
   one reason or another could not be completed in time for
   delivery of UBL 1.0.  Some of these items represent work of
   continuing interest; others represent cases where an issue
   could not achieve a consensus solution within the time set for
   UBL 1.0 delivery but for which an acceptable short-term
   strategy could be adopted with little or no impact on the
   long-term validity of UBL 1.0 document instances.  The UBL TC
   intends to resolve these issues and release an updated version
   called UBL 1.1 that will be backward-compatible with UBL 1.0
   instances.

   In the following, these work items have been loosely grouped
   under four headings: NDR Work Items, Interoperability Work
   Items, Registry Work Items, and Localization Work Items.
   Persons interested in participating in this program of work are
   invited to join the OASIS UBL TC.

H.1 NDR Work Items

   The following items are related to UBL Naming and Design Rules
   (NDR).

H.1.1 Publication of UBL NDR as a Separate Specification

   Time constraints prevented completion of the UBL Naming and
   Design Rules (NDR) document as a separate specification for
   delivery with UBL 1.0; the document included in this package
   and referenced as [NDR] contains only the rules checklist for
   1.0.  Work continues to prepare the NDR document for submission
   as a separate OASIS technical specification.

H.1.2 Substitution Groups for Code List Customisation

   The UBL Code List Subcommittee has produced a comprehensive
   solution for code lists (see Appendix E) that relies upon XSD
   substitution groups for code list customisation.  Lacking a
   clear industry consensus on the use of XSD substitution groups
   in business document schemas, the UBL TC has deferred the
   adoption of this extension mechanism for code lists pending
   further discussion.  Care has been taken to construct UBL 1.0
   in a way that will allow the adoption of substitution groups
   (if deemed appropriate) in later releases without invalidating
   UBL 1.0 instances.

H.1.3 Importation of Codelist Schema Modules

   It is an open question whether it is better to import the
   codelist schema modules (Section 6.3) indirectly via the
   Specialised Datatype schema (Section 6.2.2) or directly into
   the Common Aggregate Component schema (Section 6.2.1) and any
   individual document schemas where they are used. In UBL 1.0,
   codelist schema modules are imported directly, but concerns
   have been raised regarding a possible impact on performance.
   Feedback from UBL 1.0 implementation will be relied upon in
   resolving this issue.  A change to the alternative is not
   expected to affect UBL 1.0 instances.

H.1.4 Location of Qualified BBIE Property Element Definitions

   In UBL 1.0, all qualified BBIE property elements are defined in
   the Common Basic Components schema (Section 6.2.1).
   Alternatively, these elements could be defined in either the
   Common Aggregate Components schema or in the individual
   document schemas where they are used.  This issue remains open,
   but any change in future releases should not affect UBL 1.0
   instances.

H.2 Registry Work Items

   The following issues relate to the storage and registration of
   UBL schemas.

H.2.1 Relative Paths in Schema Modules

   UBL 1.0 has been released using relative path names for the
   location of schemas in order to facilitate offline validation
   and to work around current naming limitations on the OASIS web
   site.  Use of absolute paths and a registry for the component
   library will be considered as the supporting infrastructure
   becomes available.

H.2.2 Version Element in the Documentation of Every BIE

   UBL 1.0 assumes that the version number of each UBL BIE is also
   1.0.  However, as reusable BIEs become available from
   registries and customised libraries, it is possible that BIEs
   may be used outside of their original release.  This may result
   in a requirement to assign a version number to each BIE in
   future versions of UBL.

H.3 Interoperability Work Items

   The following work items relate to the interoperability of UBL
   documents across industries and in relation to other business
   document standards.

H.3.1 UBL Conformance

   While much initial work has been done toward defining the
   concept of UBL conformance in the UBL 1.0 Customisation
   Guidelines (see Appendix B.7), further work is necessary to
   create a definition of UBL conformance that is usable in legal
   and regulatory contexts.

H.3.2 Industry Profiles

   It is considered likely that UBL 1.0 will be modified according
   to the UBL Customisation Guidelines to create versions that are
   standard within particular industries and geographical regions.
   Further work is needed to develop guidelines specific to this
   use case.

H.3.3 Common CCTS Schemas

   The schemas for Core Component Types and Datatypes included in
   this package (Section 6.2.2) were developed in cooperation with
   representatives of the Open Applications Group, Inc., but the
   versions currently used by the two organizations are not yet
   identical.  Differences between the CCTS schemas used in UBL
   1.0 and OAGIS 9.0 have been identified in these five areas:

    - Naming of Supplementary Components as attributes

    - Use of XSD normalizedString for code, identifier, and text
      components

    - Use of XSD built-in dataypes requiring format Supplementary
      Components (Date Time, Indicator and Numeric)

    - Restrictions on Binary Object for Graphic, Picture, Sound
      and Video data type

    - Patterns for Indicator data type

   The UBL TC is forming a team to work with OAG members in the
   construction of a single set of schemas that can be used by
   both organizations and intends to adopt the common schemas in
   the UBL 1.1 time frame.

H.3.4 Core Component Harmonisation

   As an implementation of [CCTS], UBL supports the concept of a
   common semantic library of business components. To achieve
   this, UBL is working with the UN/CEFACT International Trade and
   Business Procedures Working Group on Harmonisation, known as
   TBG17
   (http://webster.disa.org/cefact-groups/tbg/wg/tbg17_main.cfm).
   This group is responsible for consistency and harmonisation of
   business process models and core components across business
   domains and sectors, contributing to a concise and well-defined
   glossary of business terms, business data semantic definitions,
   and structuring of data exchanges.  Cooperation with TBG17 is a
   continuing work item for UBL.

H.3.5 Context Methodology

   While the delivery of an automatic context methodology belongs
   to UBL 2.0, work on this item continues in the UBL 1.1 time
   frame.  This includes further refinement of the Customisation
   Guidelines referenced in B.7 of this specification.

H.4 Localisation Work Items

   UBL has formed several localization (L10N) subcommittees to
   translate the UBL specification and associated documentation
   into languages other than English and to represent the UBL
   effort in non-English-speaking regional contexts.  These
   regional initiatives will account for much of the work to be
   performed in the UBL 1.1 time frame.  As of April 2004, UBL
   localization subcommittees had been established for Chinese,
   Japanese, Korean, and Spanish.