Re: Units of Measure

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

Bob Miller "strongly believe[s] that 'pre-specified' [Unit of measure]
lists (including sufficient semantic information to interpret each such
list item) are a valid business requirement."

It certainly sounds reasonable that UOM lists should be pre-specified.
And they are:  in UN/ECE recommendation 20 at
http://www.unece.org/cefact/rec/rec20en.htm.  Is there any reason to
believe that UN/ECE Rec. 20 is less than adequate for qualifying any
measurement?  Is there any reason to think Todd Boyle's precious SME
won't understand what a milliliter or kilogram are - and how to convert
to gallons and pounds if need be?

And for those instances where one needs to define new UOMs which have
yet to be listed in UN/ECE Rec. 20, then some mechanism like X12's
composite element C001 - Composite Unit of Measure - to build new UOMs
on the fly by using the products of existing UOMs modified by exponents
and multipliers (e.g., joules per six pack) will be more than adequate.

There's no need for ebXML Core Components to fret over the "semantics"
of each UOM.  This is an application issue - and doesn't need to concern
the design of an interoperable B2B standard.  I thought this idea had
been put to bed by the time I wrote
http://lists.ebxml.org/archives/ebxml-core/200007/msg00021.html.

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/
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