Re: ebXML Entity Classes - Resend

[Chris Nelson <chris@cnelson.demon.co.uk>]

JohnMcClure or Robert Miller (Ican't work out who) wrote

<I envision a future where the X12 and UN/CEFACT dictionaries give way to a
single global encyclopedia of information objects, defined not in teram of
some given syntax, but rather in terms of their semantic meaning,
interrelationships, and defining processes supporting those
interrelationships. I know that dream is a long way from fulfillment.  Yet I
also know our understanding of business processes and the data which drive
and control them has advanced remarkably in the short period of time
represented as the computer generation.  I certainly believe my dream will
be fulfilled in this century, and really expect it to happen within the
first half of this century.  That's still a long time, and well exceeds my
life expectancy.  But it is absolutely a dream that is within reach of those
now entering the profession./>

The statistical domain are working on this right now (and for
multi-dimesional data they solved it 6 years ago).  Consider that we have to
collect data about almost everything and be able to validate it.  We do
this, not with thousands of XML elements, but with a model which has classes
such a "Concept", "Variable", "CodeList" "Structure" etc.  With this, you
can describe most (perhaps all) "documents".  Of course, the domain has to
agree on a vocabulary, so you don't get away without any hard work in the
harmonisation world.  But you do avoid developing a DTD for every document
(or, in statistics case, every questionnaire or multi-dimensional dataset).

Anyway, back to ebXML, and I think you will find that there will be a core
set of comonents types, which will be re-used, extended, and renamed as they
become specific elements in a document.  This is what the core compoent
model says.

Chris Nelson
Dimension EDI