RE: Tag Languages, UID's etc.

[Bob Haugen <linkage@interaccess.com>]

Stuart Campbell:
>The user community is looking for guidance[...]
>do lets tackle some of the simpler things first. 

Maybe the essential guidance cannot come from
looking at data elements in isolation.

In the CC-BP-Analysis group, we are working on 
what we're calling "common business processes"
and "business collaboration patterns", where we 
are trying to capture some of the most commonly 
used practices in electronic business.

I think some of the guidance you seek needs
to start at the business process level, not just
at the document or core component level.

In the collaboration patterns, we are looking at
the semantic relationships between business
transactions and documents, and also at the
most commonly used core components that
would be involved.  Lots of the semantic
relationships are based on economic
principles and common and commercial laws
that cut across many industries.

For example, the first collaboration pattern
we are trying to document is called (for now
at least) Order-Fulfillment-Settlement.

(That might actually be Order-Delivery-Payment
in most cases, but we also want to allow for
prepayments and service orders and things
that go bump in the night and thus must
be settled.)

There is a small number of core components 
that will be used in the critical relationships 
between documents in this pattern:  order ids,
product ids, quantities, locations, dateAndTime,
etc.  I'm not trying to be complete here, but
just suggestive.  The business semantic
relationships at the process level could help
to provide context (in the semantic sense) 
and priority to core components.

(P.S. this is not in opposition to industry
standards, that's where the refinement
and detail comes in.)

Regards,
Bob Haugen