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