Re: Remove all Documents? was Re: issue resolution updates

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

As I read the ebXML Requirements Spec, a business process definition
encompases the information exchanged within the specification of the
business collaboration.  I understood the Tokyo agreement to be an
expedient in the interest of time to meet specification deadlines, but
requiring an unambiguous handoff from the BP metamodel to the CC metamodel
as described in their respective specifications.  However, there should
ideally be one ebXML metamodel, and that should be an objective of ebXML-2.
For now, I don't have a problem with expecting the CC documents to cover
the analysis and structure of business documents, as long as the ebBPSS and
CC metamodels are clearly aligned and that the CC specifications provide
for business documents to be constructed from business information objects,
which are in turn constructed from core components extended by context.
Response to my comment to the CC PT on alignment was that the alignment was
understood to have been accomplished in Vancouver, and if not, it "needs to
be reflected in the documents containing the UML models, and not this one,"
i.e., "The role of context in the re-usability of core components and
business processes."  Response to my comment on business document
construction was that "this specification is entirely about how to use
context definition to "create new objects" in a way that will be
interoperable.  The change I proposed was determined to not belong in the
above cited specification.  Accordingly, the proposed change was included
as Section 9.2 in the Business Process and Business Information Analysis
Overview  [bpOVER].

Regards,

Paul Levine


                                                                                                           
                    James Bryce                                                                            
                    Clark                To:     Karsten Riemer <Karsten.Riemer@east.sun.com>              
                    <jbc@lawyer.c        cc:     "Paul R. Levine" <plevine@telcordia.com>,                 
                    om>                  ebxml-bp@lists.ebxml.org, (bcc: Paul R. Levine/Telcordia)         
                                         Subject:     Remove all Documents?  was Re: issue resolution      
                    04/18/01             updates                                                           
                    08:49 PM                                                                               
                                                                                                           
                                                                                                           





Karsten, this sounds like pretty radical surgery, and at first blush I am
having trouble conceptualizing the degree to which logical model validation
would be achievable after that triage.

Doesn't this really get you to the same place as your e-mail from Africa?
(Cardinality change, where transactions take 0..* documents instead of 1,2?
)

In a hypothetical zero-documents world:
   1.   I think we would be allowing each schema (lower case "s", e.g.,
X12, RNIF, OAG) to bring over its own level of reliability of contract
production -- instead of imposing the constraints in the somewhat RNIF-like
UMM.   Is that a good thing?  Certainly it would make for easier adoption
by all kinds of other communities, including non-UMM-users of UML.  On the
other hand, we lose some of the opportunity to logically compare apples to
apples, and we lose the advantage of reliability and stability perceived by
some in the binary pairing model.
  2.  Don't we lose some of the signals too?  I'm not sure how the DSIG
parameter or 'receiptAcknowledgement' would work, if there is a complex or
indeterminate association between the doc that asks for the parameter, and
the document(s) that [respond] to it and therefore should conform to the
parameter.    It might be a solvable problem, but it seems a little late to
crack that tough nut in a reliable and stable manner for 1.0.

Jamie

At 08:42 AM 4/18/2001 , Karsten Riemer wrote:

>Since the Specification Schema no longer has a DocumentModel, I propose to
>remove all associated references to the analysis and structure of
>BusinessDocuments from the Specification Schema, and leave that up to CC
>documents as agreed in Tokyo. I think we should try to make the
Specification
>Schema shorter, not longer.