Two new documents re: UBL Methodology for Code List and Value Validation

["G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com>]

cc: UBL TC, UBL Dev, Code List Representation TC, XML Dev

Controlled vocabularies (code lists, identifier lists, etc.) are used 
in many business documents and published XML vocabularies.  Business 
documents are often exchanged in trading partner relationships that 
impose business-level constraints on top of committee-standardized 
controlled vocabularies, while still packaging the information in the 
committee-standardized document schemas.

The OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL) Technical Committee 
publishes document constraints in the form of document schemas and 
code lists, using a two-pass validation strategy.

The OASIS Code List Representation Technical Committee is publishing 
genericode, an XML vocabulary for expressing controlled vocabularies 
as an enumeration of values combined with meta data.

Today I revised the documentation and stylesheets for the UBL 
Methodology for Code List and Value Validation that uses genericode:

   http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/document.php?document_id=23703

    - additional diagram for the context of the methodology
    - additional section on the layering of value constraints
    - bug fix in stylesheets re: use of "Code" in item names
    - use of UTF-8 encoding for all XML artefacts
    - various documentation clarifications and polish
    - no schema constraint changes from the previous revision

Version 1.0 of the UBL Methodology is awaiting the standardization of 
version 1.0 of the genericode vocabulary, which is currently in progress.

Since specifications are not, typically, tutorial in nature, I've 
also written a fabricated case study (based on a real committee 
requirement for the OASIS Customer Information Quality Technical 
Committee) of adaptations a company or a standards committee might 
want to perform in order to convert a validation strategy based 
solely on XSD into a two-pass combination of XSD for structural and 
lexical constraints and ISO/IEC 19757-3 Schematron for value 
constraints for controlled vocabularies as implemented by the UBL Methodology:

   http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/document.php?document_id=23711

This case study demonstrates that the methodology is not reserved 
only for UBL documents but can be used by anyone creating XSD schemas 
who wants to layer value constraints in a user-specified 
fashion.  Extending and restricting the values used for controlled 
vocabularies is shown.  The differences between list-level, 
item-level and instance-level meta data are described.

The case study goes step-by-step over the creation of various 
artefacts that an organization would need to publish for a default 
set of code lists, while allowing their community of users to adapt 
these code lists to specific business requirements between trading 
partners.  By formalizing these concepts into declarative files that 
can be exchanged as part of a trading partner agreement, each trading 
partner can create their own run-time implementations of these files 
for their respective environments.

As more projects are considering deploying this methodology, I'm 
getting more questions that end up clarifying and polishing the 
documentation.  I welcome any feedback for improvements.  Revisions 
to the above documents will be traceable through the OASIS repository 
links cited, so if you are reading the archives then be sure to check 
for the latest version of each package.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ken

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