re: Trading Partner or Party - What's in a name

[David RR Webber <Gnosis_@compuserve.com>]

Dave,

Why not add this to the glossary?!

If we explicitly state that party is the more generic use of TP then
all is well - we can live with the two terms and use them where they
are most applicable.

I'm a big believer in the need to engineer robust systems - becuase
users and developers will use them for things you never anticipated - 
and that's great!

DW.
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Message text written by David Burdett
>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?<