Nobody invited me to the party - More comments on PartyID in Version0.98b

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

Comments on Message Service Specification Version 0.98b (13 March 2001)
regarding the <eb:PartyId> element at Line 403.

The "From" shows the by-now ubiquitous example of a DUNS which is
troubling.  Even if Dun & Bradstreet had registered a URN namespace -
which they haven't - it would not be called "duns.com."  The Dot-Com age
is over, folks.  The few IANA registered domains that do exist have no
".com" suffix.  The example "type" attribute should probably just read
type="urn:duns".

I have given enough examples of DUNS - real, live examples - that it
should be clear that a DUNS is 9 digits long. The example shows some
sort of ID which is 13 digits long. Perhaps the intention was to show
what's commonly referred to as a "DUNS+4."   But Dun & Bradstreet, the
inventor of the DUNS - and supposedly the "owner" of the "duns" URN
namespace - has nothing to do with DUNS+4 numbers.

DUNS+4 is probably a figment of some EDI guy's imagination.  A way was
needed to describe store locations which would remain unique even with
mergers and acquisitions - so the solution was to concatenate the DUNS
with a self-assigned 4-digit store (or dock or building) number.
Imagine that a VAN (or "hub") knows how to resolve these URNs - the VAN
is unlikely to know how to resolve thousands of individual "DUNS+4"
numbers.  Or, if the ebXML Registry ever flies, it's unlikely that all
DUNS+4 numbers assigned by a trading partner will be encoded in the
CPP - instead the one or two DUNS belonging to the company will be
sufficient for delivery.  If the recipient wishes to segregate messages
depending on location or functional area, another subsidiary code will
be needed for culling (as the GS receiver ID might be used in the X12
context).

Finally, the "To" example is supposedly referring to an e-mail address.
RFC2396 Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax, at
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt - which is one of the Normative
References in section 13.1 - shows "mailto", not "smtp", as the proper
"protocol" prefix for SMTP e-mail address - as in
mailto:carol.geyer@oasis-open.org.

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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