Draft Liaison from BP to CC

["Paul R. Levine" <plevine@telcordia.com>]

Business Process Team,

Following is a draft of a liaison to the Core Components Project Team regarding
the metamodel work to date.  Thanks to Bob Haugen for pulling this together.
Discussion of this liaison is a topic on the agenda of the 1 May conference
call.   Please review it prior to the call.  Following the call, the liaison
will be submitted to the Core Components team.

Regards,

Paul Levine
BP PT Lead


-----Message to CC-----

The ebXML Business Process Metamodel is intended
to be useful to the Core Components group.  While the
Metamodel is not finished yet, this message will suggest
how it might be so used.

The Business Process group also expects this to be a
two-way conversation:  that Core Components will have
requirements for improvements of the Metamodel,
and may also be doing some parallel work on concepts
like Party.  The full set of Metamodel documents -
diagrams, definitions, scenarios and examples - should
help to frame the conversation.

1. Notation:  while XML is the destination, the BP metamodel
    work group selected UML as the notation and semantics
    for designing the metamodel.  If Core Components also
    uses UML design tools, it should facilitate evolving the
    metamodel UML diagrams into component UML diagrams.

2. Scope:  the metamodel should include all the
    entities and relationships that contain core components,
    in the sense that core components should be directly
    related to something in the metamodel as subclass,
    aggregated sub-part, realization, or attribute.  If the Core
    Components group identifies components that are not directly
    relatable to something in the metamodel, it may indicate a need
    to expand the metamodel.

3. Subdomains:  the metamodel contains several
    different domain areas, represented as UML packages:
1. Resources and Contracts
2. Markets and Communities
3. Business Processes and Rules
4. Business Information Flow and Communication
These subdomains may be useful for organizing components.

4. Subclasses:  several metamodel classes are abstract,
    and concrete subclasses may make good core components,
    including (but limited to):
* Party
* Business Event
* Business Collaboration
* Economic Resource Type
  (for example, Product, Financial Instrument,
  Services of various types)
* Economic Resource
  (for example, inventory, electronic payments, labor time, etc.)
* Contract Type and Contract
* Business Document
* Information Entity
* Fundamental Information Entity
* Business Signal
* Control Flow
* Information Flow

5. Some metamodel classes will evolve into complex
    objects, aggregating several sub-parts,
    including (but limited to):
* Party and Partner
* Business Process and Business Collaboration
* Contract Type and Contract
* Economic Resource Type
BP and CC groups could collaborate in this decomposition.

6. Most metamodel classes want to have attributes
    (or their concrete subclasses do).  Attributes
    could all be defined by Core Components.

7. Patterns and templates:
    The BP metamodel work group identified several
    re-usable configurations of objects,
    including (but not limited to):
* Business Collaboration patterns from RosettaNet
* Business Signal patterns from RosettaNet
* Exchange templates from REA
We think these re-usable configurations would make good
core components.  BP and CC could collaborate in defining
them.

8. High-level use cases:
    The BP metamodel group identified several high-level
    use cases for the metamodel that may also be useful
    to Core Components:
*  "From Scratch design" - An organization designing, implementing,
    registering a brand new market and process.
*  "Conversion" - An organization converting an existing market and
    process design, and adjusting an existing implementation.
*  "Discovery and adaption" - An organization discovering an existing
    partner and process and adapting their existing implementation
    to interoperate.
*  "Actual communication" - Two organizations actually conducting
    business by exchanging messages.

9. Business examples:
   The BP  metamodel group is collecting populated business
    examples for validating the metamodel, which we hope will be
    useful to all ebXML groups including Core Components.
    The first example is automotive supply chain procurement,
    but more examples will be documented over time.