Re: UNSPSC - whose in charge anyway?

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

Dear David:

Whatever are you complaining about this time?  The UN/SPSC (United
Nations Standard Products and Services Classification) taxonomy consists
of FOUR levels (Segment, Family, Class, and Commodity) of TWO digit
values - making a total of 8 digits per code, more than enough to
classify the existing 8000 products and services. The UN/SPSC was
developed jointly by the United Nations and Dun & Bradstreet - credible
enough names in the classification biz.   The use of this code system
allows lots of different folks from various industries to harmonize
their classification and description of products and services,
regardless of their own parochial nomenclatures.

"RosettaNet now has Rosetta UNSPSC codes, and then they map those back
to UNSPSC codes."  I've never heard of "Rosetta UNSPSC" codes.   And
probably nobody at RosettaNet has, either.  Are you referring to the
mapping between the UN/SPSC and RosettaNet products and categories?

"Maybe we need an ebXML WG on code tables?"  Maybe we should leave well
enough alone. Let the people who know how to classify goods and services
do what they do best.  Are you looking for work to do?  I never do - I
have raised "work avoidance" to a fine art, and ebXML would be
well-advised to do the same.

William J. Kammerer
FORESIGHT Corp.
4950 Blazer Memorial Pkwy.
Dublin, OH USA 43017-3305
+1 614 791-1600

Visit FORESIGHT Corp. at http://www.foresightcorp.com/
"Commerce for a New World"

-----Original Message-----
From: David RR Webber <Gnosis_@compuserve.com>
To: XML/edi Group <xmledi-group@disa.org>; CEN-ISSS
<ISSS-WS-EC-XMLEDI@LISTSERV.CENORM.BE>; Tony Blazej
<ablazej@openapplications.org>; ebXML Repository
<ebxml-regrep@lists.oasis-open.org>
Date: Sunday, July 16, 2000 12:03 PM
Subject: UNSPSC - whose in charge anyway?


These industry classification codes http://www.unspsc.org were
originally designed for governmental statistical gathering on
GNP and productivity measuring - stemming from the US NAICS
codes and similar.

As with other things they are being pressed into service for XML
based business transactions.  This appears to be a classic case
of 'close enough for government use' - but needs more for really
robust business use.

Being a 2 digit pair means everything has to fall into one of
99 value slots in the bucket.  This is just not reality.

I'm seeing switching to alphanumeric pairs at least buys you
a ton more bandwidth.

But who makes this decision?  Do implementors just go there?
RosettaNet now has Rosetta UNSPSC codes, and then they
map those back to UNSPSC codes.  Clearly there's a better way.

The whole issue here that is not being addressed is code tables
generally.  Plenty of focus on Schema - but now we moving closer
to a use model right there, we need to solve this bottom layer
question definitively - particularly so industry groups evolving
XML based exchanges have a reference point of contact.

Maybe we need an ebXML WG on code tables?  Liaison to
OAG and ISO would make sense - or maybe a joint effort
between sich bodies?  Its not really a question of
re-inventing anything - there are plenty of ISO and other
standards out there - but we do need a central point - and also
XML'ized versions of these reference tables.  ebXML will provide
the API - but how is the secretariat?

Thoughts?

DW.