Tim, Chee-Kai, William and Joe,
Thanks for your respones. I've quoted part of Chee-Kai's
response below because I think it captures one of the gray areas -- when an
element both categorizes and identifies.
So here goes again: 3 groupings follow - those that seem to be
Codes, those that are Identifiers, and then
FIPS 95-2 which is problematic for me. I've included examples to help illustrate
the various codes. It would be helpful if people indicate the ones they disagree
with.
-----
Codes
-----
ISO 3166
Country codes
US State codes
Zip Codes (Postal Zones)
NAICS codes [1] (North American Industry
Classification System codes
designate
major sectors of the economies of Mexico,
Canada,
and the United States)
Examples:
423 Merchant Wholesalers, Durable
Goods
424 Merchant Wholesalers, Nondurable Goods
425 Wholesale
Electronic Markets and Agents and Brokers
4231 Motor
Vehicle and Motor Vehicle Parts and Supplies Merchant Wholesalers
42311 Automobile and Other Motor Vehicle Merchant
Wholesalers
42312 Motor Vehicle Supplies and New Parts
Merchant
Wholesalers
PSC codes [2] (Product and Service
Code)
Examples:
V111 Air freight
V112 Motor
freight
V113 Rail freight
2210 Locomotives
2220 Rail
cars
FSC codes [3] (Federal Supply
Codes)
Examples:
2250 Track Material,
Railroad
Includes Railroad Rails; Railroad Tie Plates;
Railroad Turnouts and Components; Railroad
Spikes.
Excludes Ballast (FSC 5610); Railroad Ties (FSC
5510).
SIC codes [4] (Standard
Industrial Classification)
Examples:
700 Agricultural
Services
3630 Household Appliances
3639 Household Appliances,
N.E.C.
Indefinite Delivery Contract_ Type. Code. (enumerated set
of abbreviated choices)
-----------
Identifiers
-----------
SSN
DUNS
Standard
Carrier Alpha Codes
UPC and EAN "codes"
Receiving_ Party. Identification.
Identifier
=============================== Need help on this
one!
UNDECIDED: FIPS 95-2 [see
5]
--------------------
FIPS 95-2 agency codes
("Codes for the
Identification of Federal and Federally Assisted
Organizations")
(each code
identifies a unique agency,
but generally the number indicates parent agency which is a
grouping)
Examples:
8000 NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE
ADMINISTRATION
8001 Headquarters, NASA
8020 Ames Research
Center
8026 Goddard Space Flight Center
8029 Nasa Resident
Office, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
8032 Lyndon B. Johnson Space
Center
8035 John F. Kennedy Space Center
8038 Langley Research
Center
8041 Lewis Research Center
8044 George C. Marshall Space
Flight Center
8047 National Space Technology
Laboratories
5700 AIR FORCE, Department of the (Headquarters,
USAF)
5701 Air Force Management Engineering Agency
5702 Air
Force Inspection and Safety Center
Note: FIPS 95-2 codes are not strictly numeric. For
example:
97EX Inspector General, Office of
Should BIE be:
a) Contracting_ Organization. Agency_
Identification. Identifier
because each FIPS 95-2 uniquely
identifies a specific organization
b) Contracting_ Organization. Agency_
Code. Code
because each FIPS 95-2 places an organization within
under a parent org
(with some exceptions)
c) Contracting_
Organization. Agency_ Identification. Code
because following
Tim's and Chee-Kai's reasoning, it both cateogrizes and identifies
d)
other?
At this point, I prefer (c) myself.
Similary, FIPS 9-1 is problematic.
FIPS 9-1 Congressional Districts of the
US [see 6]
First Congressional District of Arizona for the 95th Congress
and the 101st Congress
would be coded "0401095" and "0401101," respectively,
where the first two digits represent
the State, the third and fourth digits
identify the congressional district, and the fifth,
sixth, and seventh digits
designate the number of the Congress.
This also seems like "Identification. Code" to me since the
code identifies specific congressional districts within state categories and
even Congress session categories.
-Ken Sall
-----"Chin Chee-Kai"
<cheekai@softml.net> wrote: -----
To: kenneth.sall@gsa.gov
From: "Chin Chee-Kai"
<cheekai@softml.net>
Date: 04/15/2005 12:14AM
cc:
ubl-dev@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [ubl-dev] Code vs. Identifier
representation types?
[stuff
deleted]
Allow me to use a simple generic example.
If a person A wants to buy
apples, and not oranges nor bananas nor
any other types of fruits,
A might want to specify the Code Value "APPLE"
for type of
fruit to purchase in his P.O. A doesn't want to
identify
any specific apple, but just wish to convey the message
"apple"
as a category. The dissimilar groups of things are the
fruit
categories. The group of similar things identified by
the
Code Value "APPLE" is the apple.
But if A now takes delivery of
a box of apples and found that
one of them is rotten, and he wishes to
reference that apple
to the seller to replace, he might wish to send a
message referencing
the small unique string printed on the rotten apple.
That
unique string differentiates that rotten apple from the
entire
box of seemingly identical apples, and allows A to
unambiguously
pin-point in his message to the seller which apple that he
wants
replaced.
So an Identifier then allows instances within a
given Coded class
of similar, or dissimilar, instances to be unambiguously
referenced.
Depending on how the valid values of a given Identifier type
are
defined, these ID values may refer to instances within the same,
or
different, Coded classes.
[stuff
deleted]