Re: More on throwing some context on them codes....

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

Todd Boyle thanked me for the "education" he obtained from my exposition
on the obscure science of the ANSI X12 Data Maintenance process and its
implications on "context."  He's most welcome.

It has served as a useful academic exercise.  Now I'm all pumped up over
"context" (at least at the code value level), and shall put forth an X12
DM item or work proposal request of my own asking DISA - the secretariat
for X12 (i.e., the hired help - not to be confused with X12 itself) - to
perform an archeological "dig" on all of the codes, modeled on my modest
example.  If each code value had some annotation indicating the DM which
added it to the directory, then we could eventually correlate that code
with the "functional area" pertaining to the DM.  We would be able to
divine those elusive "contexts" for each code value.  This could be the
Rosetta stone of e-commerce - at least for the X12 variety. Perhaps the
process could be repeated for UN/EDIFACT.

My intent was not to say that vocabularies are useful only if there is a
context mechanism.   But I did say a Party Role of Co-Driver,
Complainant, Interviewee, Law Enforcement Agency, Towing Agency, Party
Performing Verification, or Victim are probably of value only to certain
problem domains (e.g., casualty insurance, law enforcement, courts and
highway safety).  This would certainly be a "vertical vocabulary," in
Todd's parlance.

There are many other Party Roles which have broad applicability and
apply in most contexts (the "default" or "horizontal" context?),  like
Seller, Buyer, Carrier, and so on.  It would be easier to "see" these
once the industry specific roles (or codes) were ferreted out.  For
example, in addition to the codes which clearly belong to the "Highway
Safety" context, there are ones which are unambiguously related to
Energy Deregulation, Health Care, Secondary Education, and Election and
Campaign Finance Reform.   As the list of definitively assigned codes
grows, the remaining codes are perhaps our core horizontal vocabulary
that Todd seeks.

William J. Kammerer
FORESIGHT Corp.
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Dublin, OH USA 43017-3305
+1 614 791-1600

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