Minutes of Pacific UBL TC call 13|14 June 2005

[jon.bosak@sun.com]

MINUTES OF PACIFIC UBL TC MEETING
00H30 - 02H30 UTC TUESDAY 14 JUNE 2005

ATTENDANCE

   Jon Bosak (chair)
   Micah Dubinko
   Stephen Green
   G. Ken Holman
   Tim McGrath
   Sylvia Webb

STANDING ITEMS

   Additions to the calendar (http://ibiblio.org/bosak/ubl/calendar.htm)

      TimM: MikkelB may be able to represent UBL at the CEN/ISSS
      workshop.  There is also another workshop in Geneva the
      third week in June [?] during which Tradelink will mention
      DTTN work with UBL.

   Liaison report: X12

      SylviaW: X12 met last week.  Attendance was good -- more
      than 500 people.  The most significant developments were the
      approval of the first schema (for transportation invoice)
      based on CICA, and renewed discussion about basing X12
      schemas on data models developed by other groups (for
      example, UBL or UN/CEFACT) to achieve a greater level of
      semantic harmonization.  There will be elections for chair
      and vice chair at the September plenary.

   Liaison report: Tax XML TC

      SylviaW: Due to attendance at X12 meeting, haven't had a
      chance to catch up with what happened last week.

   Liaison report: ISO/IEC JTC1 SC34

      KenH: The SC34 meeting in Amsterdam was notable for its
      recognition of James Mason's 20 years of chairmanship.
      International Standards RNG and Schematron are working their
      way through the publication process.  There is a new work
      item in the print area: KenH will be the editor of a
      standard (like the description in UBL 1.0) for the
      specification of formatting specifications [I think that's
      accurate, but maybe Ken can suggest more felicitous
      wording].

   Subcommittee report: HISC

      KenH: ZarellaR has agreed to write up the formatting specs
      while KenH does the Crane stylesheets; MicahD is still
      working on the input specs.  SueP and MichaelD attended last
      week by phone; the meeting was positive with regard to
      cooperation between HISC and UNeDocs on mapping to the UN
      Layout Key.

      Discussion: We understand that there is a (nonnormative?)
      ISO mapping of the original UNTDED to UNLK, but UNeDocs
      appears to go beyond UNTDED.  If we could map UBL to the
      appropriate 4-digit UNTDED code, then presumably we would
      get the UNLK mapping as well, but we're not convinced that
      this will actually work.  In particular, we're not clear on
      how the recent revision of the UNTDED in TC154 relates to
      the UNLK.  It's easy to say that UBL will "use the semantics
      from UNTDED," but that's not the same as a clear "this
      equals that," and no one seems to have the resources to do
      this level of mapping.  Few people seem to believe that "all
      we have to do is map to UNeDocs."  On the other hand, we
      would certainly like to take advantage of the willingness in
      both eDocs and HISC to work together.

      AGREED that we should add a column in each UBL spreadsheet
      for the 4-digit code of the corresponding TDED entry.  We
      will seek resources (semantic experts) to perform the
      mapping; HISC stands ready to implement these semantic
      judgements but cannot be responsible for forming them.

      AGREED that HISC will discuss the idea of documenting the
      UNLK locational definitions in a row/col format and
      including this in the UBL spreadsheets as well.

   Subcommittee report: SBSC

      StephenG: We just submitted the package to the TC, so our
      main work is done; we're now waiting for TC action.

      KenH: This took a lot of hard work on Stephen's part.  We
      wonder who can be found to do this for UBL 2.0.

      SylviaW: What's the implication of SBS for tool support? We
      don't want to have to investigate problems with SBS schemas.

      Ken/Stephen: SBS is a catalog of UBL 1.0 constructs and
      doesn't define any new document schemas, so there should be
      no problems in this regard.

      AGREED that we will consider adding a "candidate for SBS"
      column to the UBL 2.0 spreadsheets so that the business
      experts can check off the items they deem interesting for
      small businesses.  Someone will need to prepopulate the
      columns to indicate the elements included in 1.0 SBS.

   Subcommittee report: SSC

      StephenG: Last week had StephenG, AnneH, and DavidK.  We
      reviewed the decisions and NDR discussions from the Atlantic
      TC call of 8 June; it looks like this fits DavidK's schedule
      and that he could get some work done on implementing the
      changes before he leaves on vacation the second week of
      July.  StephenG and sent out a draft list of the schema
      changes today.

      SylviaW: The plan sounds reasonable and the draft looks
      good.

   Team report: European input to 2.0

      TimM: Held a meeting last week, and the European
      stakeholders are meeting tomorrow in London to finalize the
      documents needed for the extended procurement model.  OGC is
      still debating some of the taxation issues, so the issues
      list will need further revision.  There is growing interest
      in UBL among the Northern European governments, but we need
      to involve IDA more closely.

   Team report: Transport documents

      TimM: Detailed working session last week; ThomasL and TimM
      are now deeply involved in analysis of the DTTN library (the
      reusable part of which has 2.5 thousand rows of
      definitions).  It's becoming apparent that this is a very
      specialized implementation, so our goal (as with the
      taxation requirements) should be to simplify this into a
      common generalized form rather than picking up the DTTN work
      directly.  This will take a fair amount of effort, but we
      will benefit from the richness and practicality of the
      library.  We're now at the point where we can involve
      CrimsonLogic and talk about how CO fits in with the DTTN
      library.  ThomasL has done an interesting mapping among
      DTTN, CO, and eDocs that highlights the difference between a
      generalized library and a specialized one. Bottom line is
      that we are getting an idea of the scale of work involved,
      and it will take quite a bit to get this input into a form
      useful for UBL.

      JonB: So our plan for this depends on the availability of
      resources.

      TimM: And overlaps with what we may or may not do with
      UNeDocs.

   Review of Eurasia and Atlantic TC minutes

      JonB: Apologies for not having the Atlantic minutes together
      in time for this call.

      No objections to agreements made in last week's Eurasia
      call.

ACTION ITEM REVIEW

   ACTION: JonB to schedule a discussion of CCTS compliance that
   will include MarkC and MichaelD.

      Status: Awaiting Mark's return from vacation.

   ACTION: PeterB to finish up the 2.0 issues list so that we can
   review it 13|14 June.

      TimM: Couldn't really finalize because there are still some
      issues being debated for inclusion, but did distribute a
      copy of the current issues list yesterday.

CONTENT WORK

   The issues list distributed yesterday has broken links and
   other problems (e.g., last updated date, color coding...).
   Some comments from the meeting 5/24 have been included in
   resolutions.

   ACTION: TimM to contact BettyH to arrange a return of the
   issues list to her care as soon as it has reached a stage where
   this is possible.

   Party types: We need to keep "buyer party" and "seller party"
   for compatibility with 1.0, but it's clear that we need further
   differentiation: "supplier," "customer," "dispatcher," etc.
   "Bill from," "bill to," "ship from," "ship to" are currently
   locations, but there is a need to expand these to be parties.

   AGREED that it is better to model these roles as parties rather
   than addresses or contacts.

   ACTION: TimM to update PeterB on this preference for inclusion
   in the party white paper.

   Tax XML: See minutes of last week's Pacific and Eurasia calls.

   SylviaW: The detailed info in the Tax XML input was intended as
   FYI to supplement our deliberations.

   AGREED that we wish to involve experts from the Tax XML in
   helping with the design and describing how the general
   structures in UBL 2.0 can be applied to specific application
   scenarios.

   ACTION: SylviaW to communicate this sentiment to the Indirect
   Taxation SC meeting this week.

Jon Bosak
Chair, OASIS UBL TC