re: Questions from Brussels

[David RR Webber <Gnosis_@compuserve.com>]

Message text written by "Petit, John"
>The issues I have here are somewhat
different, or perhaps worded differently, from our "outstanding issues"
section of the Architecture Doc. More than likely the answers to these
questions have been stated, or I missed them in the specs. If anyone is
inclined, I would appreciate a few answers to some of them. 
<<<<<<<<<<<

John,

The coherent vision thing.

Perhaps I can offer some help here.

Check out my presentation to ECR2000 in Atlanta.

 http://www.bizcodes.org/ecr2000.htm

Unfortunately the requirements document ended up being
sanitized of any firm stance, that we had previously been
directed to ensure it contained!

Where the wind blows, the sails are hoisted and lowered
accordingly.

Anyway - looks like your issues list is also good items for the
Coordination WG to make sure are being addressed by the
Step Models.

Thanks for the gap analysis, 

DW.
============================================================

Requirements


1.      Does the scope of ebXML mean that we are defining a comprehensive
and cohesive e-commerce system, or a series of independent,
non-interoperable systems. Are we leaving the ability of interoperate at a
global level off the requirements doc? I got opinions on both sides of
this.
The requirements document is rather vague on this (and most other issues). 


Business Process Methodology


1.      Are these UML process descriptions required? Can a company
participate in ebXML without these UML process descriptions? Could XSL B2B
stylesheets and rules be enough? I talked with some people from the BP
group
and there were varying answers. 

2.      Are we going to be defining a set of stereotype extensions to UML
to
accommodate process?


Technical Architecture


1.      Many questions have come up in the course of our sub-groups work
over the past six months. Anders made a good point in saying that these
issues, which seem to be continually swept under the rug, should be handled
more formally and thoroughly. What is happening with that? 

2.      The global search mechanism is still undefined. How will such a
global search work? How will users find particular schemas to search upon?
How will the perform common core searches? 

3.      How will items in repositories be updated when changes are made?
What is the change mechanism? 

4.      Should we not have more UML designs in our document? Should these
not form the basis of our architecture? If so, we should have them now.
Perhaps we should also follow the Rational Method, as several other groups
are doing. 

5.      If we are building this, or specing this, should we not follow the
Rational Process and develop the domain model and  a complete use case list
for requirements? So far we have not produced UML models of the
architecture. This seems remiss as UML is playing such a large role in
ebXML. 

6.      What about Autosearch GUI generation? I know that there will be
some
sort of facility to associate metadata documents with DTDs and schemas. How
will these extra metadata documents be referenced or associated with the
schema? Will this facility be able to accommodate documents that allow
search description. This is a facility for agent control/both manual and
programmatic. [NOTE: need to see how this facility will work, then perhaps
make a separate specification and recommendation] 


a.      I do not feel that this is out of scope for ebXML. Human interface
is critical to effectively accessing the terabytes on information that
ebXML
will be dealing with. In order to access this information easily, we must
provide a path by which schema authors can specify the interface that makes
sense to accompany their schema. Such specifications will allow the
automatic generation of multiple languages as well. 

b.      If someone can tell me that this is beyond the scope of ebXML, or
not worth addressing, then fine. If it has to be a separate specification,
fine, but we should have the facility to work with it. 

7.      What about commercial exchanges? This should at least be addressed
by example. What about other specs that should be included? OFX etc.?
covered and gone over in scope.


Core Components


1.      Will Core be defining a list of common business tags? This seems a
real opportunity missed if they do not. If it does not, ebXML will not be
able to perform cross schema searches on basic items such as price and
business category. 

2.      Not addressed yet is the mechanism whereby a global search system
will identify items in schemas that are called by attribute namespaces.
This
needs to be addressed for inclusion in the Tech architecture. 


Transport/Routing and Packaging


Registry and Repository


1.      What exactly are items in the repository and items in the registry?
Clearly binaries will not be indexed and searched upon directly through
ebXML. However, binary files will accompany XML documents (gif, jpeg, moov,
applet, etc.). This needs further definition. 

2.      Who will control the registry of registries? What sort of
organization can run a registry? 

3.      As this is supposed to be egalitarian, there are limited costs
involved in this correct SO to RA? 

4.      How will the update of data be registered? What is the mechanism
for
this? 

5.      What exactly is stored in the registry? Will schemas and
categorizations be part of registries, or will this be left up to the whim
of the RA?


Technical Coordination


Cheers, John Petit 
KPMG 
XMLfs Team 
Office: 970 728 9468 
Mobile: 312 961 8956