RE: where the qualifiers went...

[Bob Haugen <linkage@interaccess.com>]

Robert Miller wrote:
>I hope and believe that the EWG/X12 effort will adopt a top down approach to
>Core Component design that will produce significant results by the end of
>this year.

Some of us were talking in Vancouver about the unification of business
process and information models.  We didn't get very far on it yet, but
immediately it clarified all kinds of issues about core components
and business documents and their actual use in conducting
electronic business.

For example, considering the stages of a business transaction in
Open-EDI:  identification, planning, negotiation (of commitments), 
actualization (fulfilling commitments), and post-actualization
(returns, service, etc.).  The information model must be consistent 
in structure and content across all stages.  Moreover, at each
stage there are particular information structures that are critical -
for example, commitments require who, what, when, how much,
where, etc.  And there are essential relationships between
information elements at different stages:  fulfillments vs
commitments, etc.

If the above is too abstract for you,
commitment = PO Line Item
fulfillment = Product Delivery
etc.

Also, to agree with Mr. Miller, it really will help to model
all this stuff in as syntax-neutral way as possible (e.g. UML).
CIDX is a chemical industry standards group that modeled
all their stuff in UML and derived DTD's automatically.
Now they want to move to XML Schema and it's just
a matter of some new production rules.

I hope the EWG/X12 effort will consider business processes
as well as information elements.  I'll be there for a while 
Tuesday and Wednesday and would be interested in talking
to anybody who wants to continue this discussion in person.

Regards,
Bob Haugen
708-524-1436