RE: Tags and semantics ( was Dotted Names)

[Bob Haugen <linkage@interaccess.com>]

Philip Goatly:
>   What I would regard as a business transaction involves the following:
>   1.  Seller
>   2.  Buyer
>   3. Something Sold ( lets call it Goods/Services)
>   4. Payment

>When the Seller owns the payment and the Buyer owns the Goods/Services then
>the 'Transaction' is complete. From a physical and legal point of view.

I agree, and so does the Open-EDI model, but ebXML BP has chosen
to use the name "Business Transaction" to designate what UN/CEFACT
UMM used to call "commercial transaction", which is pretty much
the same as the RosettaNet transaction model:  an atomic of unit
of work in a B2B-ecommerce context, basically a request-response
interaction with some accompanying rules for lower-level business
signals, timeouts, etc. so the buyer and seller can be reasonably
sure that they have a legally binding agreement.

The name was not my choice, however, that is what ebXML BP means
by "Business Transaction" when capitalized.  The whole business
transaction from your point of view (and  mine) might be modeled
as a Business Collaboration in ebXML, which is a group of
Business Transactions.

>So I don't believe that International trade can be modelled as a series of
>accounting entries and I am not sure how one would identify the individual
>'business transactions' as defined by ebXML.

It's not difficult to identify the ebXML Business Transactions.
Basically, each of the business documents sent between the
parties to the larger Business Collaboration would be
sent inside a Business Transaction, either as a Requesting
or Responding document.

The point is not that everything is an accounting entry.  
Some transactions result in legal commitments or legal
or accounting events (changes of ownership).  Some don't.
Business people and systems need to know the difference.

>Is it not fair to say that the whole 'trade chain' constitues the
>Transaction which may be broken  down into a number of business activities ?

Depends on the definition of "transaction": in ebXML-BP, the
whole trade chain might be modeled as a Business Collaboration,
and each activity would be a Business Transaction.

I am not trying to convince you of the correctness of the names,
only to explain as best I can what ebXML-BP means by them.

Regards,
Bob Haugen