Re: Representation Types Alternatives

["William J. Kammerer" <wkammerer@foresightcorp.com>]

Thanks to Margaret Pemberton for the news that the UN/EDIFACT Message
Design Rules has added the new representation terms of age, date,
degree, measure, period, text and time.   DISA's Gaile Spadin  informed
me that the documentation from the Washington EWG is now available at
the UN/EDIFACT (EWG) web site, at http://www.edifact-wg.org/, under
"Washington, March 2001 : Minutes, Documents & Presentations."   The
Message Design Rules for EDI Release - 2.3 (TRADE/CEFACT/R.840/Rev.6) of
2001-01-03 contains the new, complete list of representation terms in
section B.5: age, amount, code, date, degree, description, identifier,
measure, name, number, percent, period, quantity, rate, text and time.

Compare these to Section 6 - List of Representation Types - in the ebXML
Naming Convention for Core Components Version 1.02 (21 March 2001):
Amount, Code, Count, Date, DateAndTime, Identifier, Indicator, Measure,
Percent, Quantity, Rate, Text and Time.

Why can't UN/EDIFACT and ebXML use the same list of representation
terms?  What's Mike Rawlins' hangup with the terms anyway?  And why is
BP bothering with listing Data Types in Section 9.1 Data typing in the
Business Process Specification Schema Version 0.99 (03/19/2001)?  Of all
the things that need to be explained, W3C Schema Datatypes aren't one of
them since the information is readily available at
http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/ - which should be a normative
reference in the BP specification. Anyway, BP's aiming at a moving
target and is already out of date: the timeInstant datatype has since
been replaced by dateTime in XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes!

By the way, DIN 16557-5, Rules for generation of XML scheme files (XSD)
on the basis of EDI(FACT) implementation guidelines, is in the same set
of Washington EWG documentation.  It's in English, fortunately.  Say,
why doesn't Core Components just adopt DIN 16557-5, declare victory and
close up shop?

William J. Kammerer
FORESIGHT Corp.
4950 Blazer Pkwy.
Dublin, OH USA 43017-3305
+1 614 791-1600

Visit FORESIGHT Corp. at http://www.foresightcorp.com/
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