Rationale for including business role in worksheet model

[Charlie Fineman <fineman@arzoon.com>]

This message is intended to support my contention that Business Role should
be introduced into the Worksheet Model (even though it may not currently
appear in the UMM as such).

There was unanimous agreement in the wednesday conference call that the
CommercialTransaction was the appropriate "representation" of a message as
defined in typical standards bodies (e.g. the x12 856). Furthermore, it was
assumed that a large population of potential ebXML users would want to jump
into ebXML at this level, it was important to support this Use Case in the
Worksheet Model.

The CommercialTransaction exists (in the worksheet model) at a higher level
than the Activity (which is an ebXML implementation detail) and at a lower
level than a Collaboration (which is potentially a coordination of multiple
CommercialTransactions).

Both of these abstractions (Collaboration and Activity) have a pariticpant
associated with them (PartnerType and AuthorizationRole respecitively). In
order to support people jumping into the worksheet scenario, we need a
paceholder to store this information until the user ellaborates up or down
the Worksheet Model. I suggest that the Business Role is the appropriate
"slot" for this information and should be tied to the CommercialTransaction
in the Worksheet Model. There is a seperate discussion to be held regarding
wether this belongs in the UMM.

I have some thoughts on how this relates to "context" (in light of the
intrinsic/extrinsic notion I suggested) but I want to read the context
document before expressing any more views.