[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [Elist Home]
Subject: [ubl] Re: Draft UBL white paper
Peter, Thanks for the comments on the UBL white paper and sorry for the delay in replying; I've been at the annual XML conference all week. [yimpp@cim-oem.com:] | 1. Page 2, last line under "The Vision:.." section | | To: "... By lowering the bar to adoption of e-business technology, | UBL promises to, for example, extend the efficiencies of automated | ERP systems beyond the individual enterprise." | | Change: ", for example," inserted. I don't think this adds much, and it hurts the flow. | 2. Page 4, 9th line from the bottom | | To: "... (for example, the fact that an invoice contains | information on the “buyer”, and that “buyer” | information includes an “address”, and so on), ..." | | Was: "... (for example, the fact that an invoice contains a piece | for “buyer” and that a “buyer” contains an | “address”), ..." OK. | 3. Page 5, very top | | To: " ... While they validate the UBL concept, neither xCBL nor | any of the other current XML business dialects has established | itself as a genuine international standard. The purpose of UBL is | to achieve this standardization." | | Change: change "prove" to "validate"; delete the word "however,". I'll take the "validate," but I think we have to keep the "however." | 4. Page 9, very bottom | | To: " ... By expressing business process information as metadata, | the UBL context mechanism enables a business to send documents | that are tailored to a partner's business process without | requiring it to reveal any proprietary details about its own | processes." | | Change: I believe the original author meant "without" (and not | "with"). Ooh. Nice catch. | 5. Your first paragraph (quoted below) under section "Documents, | Components, and Context" pretty much spells out *what* UBL will be | and *how* one sees it being used. | | "The primary deliverable of UBL is a set of standard formats | for common business documents such as invoices, purchases | orders, and advance shipment notices. These formats are | designed to be sufficient for the needs of many ordinary | business transactions and, more importantly, to serve as the | starting point for further customization. To enable this | customization, the standard document formats will be made up of | standard “business information entities,” which are the | common building blocks (addresses, prices, and so on) that make | up the bulk of most business documents. Basing all UBL document | schemas on the same core information entities maximizes the | amount of information that can be shared and reused among | companies and applications." | | The vision calls for a universal adoption, and an "extend through | customization" approach. I would suggest that we, in addition to | the above, also offer UBL as being a reference standard against | which people can (a) "map their existing system to", and/or (b) | use as the "intermediary standard" through which business achieve | interoperability between disparate systems and cultures. | | Using the human language metaphor, what I am suggesting would be | something like: | | We tell people that: | | "we are offering up a new language called English, which will | have a rich, but then, extensible vocabulary. We suggest that | everyone in the world starts using English as the language for | business; and if they find that they are constraint by the | limited vocabulary being offered, they could always extend it | ..." | | I am now suggesting that we also consider: | | "we are offering up a new language called English. ... The | whole world will benefit by everyone starting to speak English | when they transact business. We can also use English as the | intermediary standard by which the Chinese, Indonesians, | Russians and French can translate their own languages | to. Through that, they can start transacting business with the | rest of the world without having to make everyone in their | respective countries to learn English." | | If you adopt what I am suggesting, we are effectively making UBL | the "ontology" of business through which we hope to achieve | semantic interoperability among disparate cultures and systems. | | That being said, I would suggest that you consider adopting the | above concept into this paper, but more importantly, into the UBL | TC's approach. My hunch is that UBL can in fact function as you suggest. But I think we face enough political problems in selling our approach to the more theoretically minded without making this further claim for it. In particular, I don't think that adopting this as a goal would have any practical effect on the design of UBL; UBL will either work as you suggest or it won't. So while I think I agree with you, I can't see a net gain resulting from putting this point in the white paper. Jon
[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [Elist Home]
Powered by eList eXpress LLC