A set of XSLT stylesheets implementing forwards compatibility in UBL 2 systems (UBL TC)

["G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com>]

Hello all,

I've just published a library of XSLT 1.0 stylesheets used to 
implement forward compatibility in systems supporting UBL 2.0.

These can be found through Crane's home page, and from the right 
margin select "Free resources", then the first section for "UBL, UN 
Layout Key, XPath and Code List Resources" link, then the section 
"Stylesheet/filter resources" where you will find "Crane's UBL 2 
instance filters" (I am not posting the link in the archive in case 
the URL has to change, the above instructions should be consistent 
regardless of the file locations).

This is a collection of XSLT filters used to create a pure UBL 
instance by copying all elements defined by a UBL 2 specification and 
ignoring those not defined by the specification.  Also available are 
stylesheets for each document type.  As minor revisions of UBL are 
published by the UBL Technical Committee, Crane's library of filters 
will be updated to support each one.

Such filtering is important to a UBL deployment that needs to be 
forward compatible in a heterogeneous network where instances of 
different minor revisions are being used. The validation of a 
filtered instance reflects any constraint violations to the minor 
version supported, not to any subsequent minor versions that are 
guaranteed to violate the earlier minor version constraints. Thus, an 
application will not be prevented from inspecting the filtered 
instance to determine the original minor version level and know that 
some indeterminate information items have been removed by filtering.

I'm planning to create a Python/SAX-based implementation of these 
filters that should run faster than XSLT because of there not being 
any need to build a source node tree.

I'm planning to add documentation as we get deployment experience, 
but for now I want to get these out in order to talk about them at 
tomorrow's UBL face-to-face in Stockholm.

Please forward any questions or comments off list.

I hope people find this interesting ... I'm looking forward to feedback.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . Ken

cc: UBL TC, UBL Dev

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