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Subject: Re: What do people really expect from ebXML? - spinning mirrors?
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. 4950 Blazer Pkwy. Dublin, OH USA 43017-3305 +1 614 791-1600 Visit FORESIGHT Corp. at http://www.foresightcorp.com/ "accelerating time-to-trade"
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