Re: What do people really expect from ebXML? - spinning mirrors?

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

David Lyon was kind enough to give us the minimum required elements
within a simple invoice line item, consisting of code (which I take to
mean commodity code or vendor part no.), description, comments, unit of
[measure], rate (or unit price), quantity, tax and amount.   This has
"...been this way since time [immemorial]," and David wants to know "why
has [its] understanding suddenly been lost?"

I would agree that David's shopping list is probably a minimally
sufficient set of Invoice line item components for the typical SME for
small dollar transactions.  And as expected, it's probably the same as
what you would expect for the converse: a minimally sufficient PO line
item.

So I hit the jackpot when I selected the model from the Open Buying on
the Internet (OBI) Consortium, consisting of almost that exact same set.
The only differences are 1) OBI requires a line item number in the PO -
a requirement inherited from X12 EDI (though the converse, line item
nos. for an invoice, are not required to be returned in the IT1
segment), 2) OBI would allow, but not mandate, descriptions and
comments, and 3) OBI (and EDI) has no need for David's line amounts.
And I would argue that an ebXML abstract "core" line item would have no
need for an amount either, since that can easily be calculated by the
recipient with a stylesheet or what-not.

Given the fairly decent match between David's intuition or experience,
and the OBI guideline, perhaps the rest of the PO's core components can
be "discovered" from the same document.  Now we can sit an innocent, say
Betty Harvey, down with the OBI stuff and she would be able come up with
a reasonable set of PO core components  - even though she's rarely
sighted one of these critters.

Which was the whole point of my spiel about reverse engineering. And I
think BP's Catalog of Common Business Processes (bpproc_v0.99.pdf)
section on Discovery of Core Components was saying this, also.

William J. Kammerer
FORESIGHT Corp.
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Dublin, OH USA 43017-3305
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