RE: Jon Bosak's suggestion that xCBL be adopted astheebXMLBusinessDocument framework

[John McClure <hypergrove@olympus.net>]

>
> The fundamental problem of EDI and ebXML is that you think
> you can have a continuous, elastic vocabulary and grammar.
> You're all wrong.  You can't.
>
> The fact is, you have to declare an EDI-Light because otherwise
> the small business community is too fragmented to converge
> around any subset and as a result, they are converging around
> the new, crummier vocabularies.  Doesn't that bother you?

I think your alternative to a continuous elastic vocabulary -- I suppose it
would be a fixed subset called "Ted's top 1000 terms" immortalized as XML
element-type names -- is misguided. I do think it's possible to have an
elastic vocabulary pretty darn easily.

<Product xsi:type='Equipment' name='naipc:Refrigerator'/>

I refer specifically to the name attribute which contains the name of the
type of thing that the element represents. This is a namespace-qualified
name, a namespace indicated by an element giving the uri of a dictionary.

<Dictionary xmlns:naipc='uri of dictionary'/>

These are pretty simple ideas for SME programmers to understand. Maybe if
xCBL started using a dictionary, then there wouldn't be over 600 DTDs.
Figuring to use XML Schema as your metadata repository? That should perform
well, particularly during validation and simple data entry. And enjoy its
single inheritance, and how coordinated it is with creating OO software.
You'll probably need an XML Schema priesthood skilled at hacking, what with
those pesky business rules! So, lots of DTDs. Lots of XML elements. Lots of
stylesheets. Lots of software. A design worth immortalizing.

This talk about the "new, crummier vocabularies" has me LOL!
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