Trading Partner or Party - What's in a name

[David Burdett <david.burdett@commerceone.com>]

Foks

We have two names for essentially the same thing - Trading Partner and Party
- does it matter?

My personal view is that there should be one, but which?

For my 2c here are my views on the pros and cons of each:
For Trading Partner:
* Well known term used widely within EDI to identify a company, business,
etc involved in trade
* Implies that commerce or business is involved
* Used by IBM in their Trading Partner Agreement

For Party:
* also a well known term used identify one of the companies, businesses, etc
involved in trade
* does not necessarily imply that Trade is involved.

IMO, I prefer Party to Trading Partner since a lot of the work we are doing
in ebXML, e.g. TRP and Core Components, can be used in a non commercial
context and to imply that it could be used only in a commercial context by
using *might* limit its use. On the other hand:
* the "b" in ebXML stands for "business" so maybe we should be explicit and
accept commercial only use as a constraint, and
* if TRP works, it will be used in none "trade" contexts since people won't
care they'll just want to take advantage of it anyway.

Thoughts?

David


Product Management, CommerceOne
4400 Rosewood Drive 3rd Fl, Bldg 4, Pleasanton, CA 94588, USA
Tel: +1 (925) 520 4422 (also voicemail); Pager: +1 (888) 936 9599 
mailto:david.burdett@commerceone.com; Web: http://www.commerceone.com