Notation to support BPSS

["A.J. [Tony] Blazej" <ablazej@openapplications.org>]

The Open Applications Group (OAGI) has been hired by
the STAR consortium (Standard for Technology in the Automotive Retail) to
develop specifications for conducting electronic business between car
dealerships and manufacturers. The STAR/XML working group involves
companies such as GM, Ford, DaimlerChrysler, Toyota, Honda on the
manufacturing side, and EDS, R&R, APD and UCS on the dealership
management system side. In many ways, we feel this is the first project
of its kind, with a magnitude that will be hard to surpass. Its success
will certainly make a wide impact on the success of the ebXML community
overall. [See News Release at:
http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/f_headline.cgi?bw.070901/211902664
]

We are currently completing the first phase of
this project. The STAR/XML working group, at our recommendation, has
decided to utilize OAG BODs and ebXML as the basis of their architecture.
We are specifying Business Object Documents as the payload of
transactions that run over an ebXML infrastructure. We are specifying
business collaborations following the ebXML BPSS specification
rigorously. The OAGI will release shortly a white papers that details the
usage of BPSS and other elements of ebXML.

Even though the semantic of the specification suit the needs of the
project, we feel that lack of a standard (or de facto) notation is a
major show stopper for us as we need to communicate the way
collaborations operate to both business analysts and technical users.
Relying on an XML document to solely communicate the details of the
collaboration is far too limiting.

In the absence of a standard, the OAGI and STAR/XML are planning to use
the notation proposed by Jean-Jacques Dubray. However, we would prefer to
use a "consensus" notation if we can converge on one quickly.

Would this working group be interested in tackling this problem? If so
can we agree on a time table?
Tony
A.J. (Tony) Blazej 
Director of Industry Programs 
Open Applications Group, Inc. 
203-966-7388 
ablazej@openapplications.org