Re: eBTWG Proposal BPSS Revision Project 0.3 DRAFT

[bhaugen <linkage@interaccess.com>]

From: LONJON Antoine
> ...I have difficulties to see UMM as THE metamodel being the pivot and
> neutral expression for collaboration language.
[...]
> Whatever opinion people may have about my thought on UMM, they can't
ignore
> that the XML world has its own way to metadata.

Antoine,

How can I communicate with you?  There is a lot of rich experience
inside ebXML, and I think if this is going to work, some people from
each of those experience-groups need to open their minds and find
ways to respect and understand and combine strengths with each
other.  (If that's what you are saying, I agree.  If you're saying
ignore UMM, I disagree.)

Those experience groups include:
* X12 and EDIFACT doing practical B2B ecommerce for years
* UN/CEFACT TMWG and BPAWG and ISO Open-EDI
which have lessons that haven't been absorbed by the
larger group yet (I can spell them out)
* the UMM metamodel coming from telecommunications
and RosettaNet, especially the transaction patterns
* UML and OMG and EDOC and the emerging event-driven
component model
* XML going all the way back to SGML and onward to the
Semantic Web
* the REA gang, working for 20 years to distill the essence
of business semantics
* and not mentioned much, but the Web application
developers and their hard-won scalable architectures.

I can find value in each of those approaches.
I should probably also list the workflow community,
which goes against my personal prejudice, but I can
get over it...and I'm sure I left something important out.

No one of those groups has all the answers.  I want to
continue to work with UMM because of the ideas
embedded in the metamodel and transaction patterns,
not because it's UML.  I can build collaboration
patterns on top of those transaction patterns.

I also want to see how those collaboration patterns
work with BPML, WSFL, XLang, etc. - whatever
is going to survive as the ideas merge and some
die.

This is a time of transition.  Nobody knows what
will evolve out of it.  I'm trying not to close any
interesting doors.

Ok with you?

-Bob Haugen