RE: ebXML in W3C? and OASIS Business Transaction group

[tony.am.fletcher@bt.com]

Dear Colleagues,

My mail seems to have generated some good discussion.  Thanks to everyone
for their illuminating and helpful comments.

Replying to a few:

Sazi Temel:  It was someone else pointing out existence of the OASIS
Business Transactions TC and these web pages that caused the concern!!

Krishna Sankar:  The MoU between OASIS and UN/CEFACT on the continuation of
ebXML sets up
a) a management group to resolve such conflict issues as this potential one
and to market the ebXML initiative (etc.), 
b) a common technical architecture group to oversee and maintain the
documentation of the overall technical architecture of ebXML
c) assigned all the technical infrastructure work to OASIS and the Business
Process and Core Component (data structure standards) to UN/CEFACT.

As a result of this UN/CEFACT is re-organising its existing work to take
account of and make use of the ebXML work.

To Karl Best I would say, I was rather hoping OASIS would do the same.  If
the Business Transaction were to mean 'Business Process' (a reading but I
understand an incorrect one) then OASIS should point the group in the
direction of the UN/CEFACT Business Process group.  Very helpful mails from
Alistair Green and Peter Furniss indicate that the emphasis is rather on the
word transaction (in support of business process) in the sense of 2 phase
commit with commit or rollback possibilities.  OASIS is now responsible for
the ebXML messaging protocol and it seems to me that the Business
transaction XML protocol work should be harmonised and folded in (if the
messaging team agree, of course).

Neal Smith's message explains something of the nature of the OASIS
organisation.  I had not appreciated this before and also I accept the
timing point - but things do move on and we have to adjust so my point above
still stands.  I think that agreeing to sign the MoU should bring some
commitment and this may mean change.

Thanks also to Bob Haugen for his explanations of what is hidden within the
ebXML work and also to David Welsh (and apologies to anyone I have missed).

I am not sure that its a case of the more standards we can generate the
better - I think a set of standards that hang together should be what people
are looking for.

The clarifications about what the Business transaction group is actually
about indicates to me that there would be great value in it being brought
into the ebXML specification set and properly positioned there and overlap
eliminated so it can become a proper part of the ebXML 'toolkit'.

Best regards   Tony

A. M. Fletcher
BTexact Technologies
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  tony.am.fletcher@bt.com

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-----Original Message-----
From: Karl F. Best [mailto:karl.best@oasis-open.org]
Sent: 05 July 2001 20:53
To: ebxml-bp@lists.ebxml.org
Cc: business-transaction@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: ebXML in W3C? and OASIS Business Transaction group


David Welsh wrote:

> I believe BTP was begun before OASIS signed the Memo of
> Understanding with CEFACT, to jointly continue ebXML development;
> so there might be a timing issue causing the question of
> overlaping objectives.

That is correct. The OASIS BTP TC Call For Participation was sent out on 18
January 2001 (see
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/tc-announce/200101/msg00002.html), and
the first meeting was held 13 March. The MoU between OASIS and UN/CEFACT was
signed 11 May.

The BTP TC Call For Participation identified how the work of this TC relates
to that of ebXML, which Alastair Green clarified in a posting earlier today.
The MoU applied only to the future of the ebXML work, and said nothing about
the status of other OASIS or UN/CEFACT work.

> 'Conflict' might be a strong term, and I've heard how to form a
> TC but I'm not familar with the OASIS TC on-going workings, so
> perhaps someone at the OASIS management level would get involved
> here align the TC work on the OASIS side of the house ?

OASIS technical work is driven by our members; i.e. our members decide what
technical work we will do. Our technical process (see
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/process.shtml) allows any three of our
members to form a technical committee on any topic, even if that effort
happens to duplicate the work of other groups. We do our best to ensure
collaboration, and have a good history of getting competitive groups to work
together, but there may on ocassion be duplicate efforts. But I don't think
that this is the case with BTP.


</karl>
=================================================================
Karl F. Best
OASIS - Director, Technical Operations
978.667.5115 x206
karl.best@oasis-open.org  http://www.oasis-open.org


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