Re: ebXML Entity Classes - or EDIFACT is based on DBA skills andtheory and look where it got...

["William J. Kammerer" <wkammerer@foresightcorp.com>]

John McClure told Bob Miller "Surely, data-modelers can do better than
elements like <PurchaseOrderReceiptDate> -- where is the normalization?
Have all our DBA skills and theory become moot in the XML age? I think
not."

I guess "DBA skills and theory" were all the rage when UN/EDIFACT was
devised.  Regardless of the type of date, it's generally going to go
inside a DTM (Date/Time/Period) segment.  And the type of date (in this
case, Order received date/time) will be used as a qualifier.  So you
have:

        DTM+8:20000228:102'

Where 8 means "Order received date/time", and 102 says the 20000228 is a
date in the form CCYYMMDD.  The DTM allows an incredible amount of
normalization - just change the Date or time or period function code
qualifier (the 8 in this example) to any of a myriad code values
described by UN/EDIFACT data element 2005, and you can describe any kind
of date (or time or date-time) under the Sun.

But this is precisely what people bitch about when bemoaning the
complexity of EDI.  XML was supposedly going to cure these ills.

William J. Kammerer
FORESIGHT Corp.
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