My personal responses to the public review comments

Hi everyone.  Below are my personal responses to the public review
comments, which I'm providing as an input to the TC.  Cheers, Tony.

--
Relationship with ISO 11179: Peter Brown asked why there was no formal
reference to ISO 11179.  My answer is that ISO 11179 tends to be a basis
for modelling methodologies (in particular the naming conventions), and
doesn't apply directly to code lists.  I note that both UN/CEFACT and ISO
20022 have some basis in ISO 11179, and both are interested in genericode,
which suggests that genericode is complementary to ISO 11179.  I don't
believe there is anything in the genericode specification which requires a
formal reference to ISO 11179, nor do I think it would be helpful to users
to add such a reference.

Committee draft of genericode 1.0 does not support xml:base: I noted that
the current Schema does not provide support for xml:base, and I think it
should, although only for location URLs.  I don't think it should apply to
canonical URIs.

The basic structure of the lists: Martin Roberts proposed a change to
genericode that would make it possible to apply Schema simple data type
validation to values in rows.  The reason that genericode doesn't do this
already is because genericode allows for data type libraries other than
the XML Schema datatype library, just as RELAX NG makes this provision
(although I expect most people to use the Schema datatypes most of the
time).  This may be worth discussing, to see what people feel generally.

Note that it isn't *so* straightforward, because you still have to check
that the values in each row match the datatype of the associated columns,
and that isn't something you can check with an XML Schema.  So you need
some 3rd party validation tool anyway (and I'm currently writing one), and
the question is whether you do the simple type validation in the Schema in
or the checking tool.

There were a number of comments around the positioning of genericode by
OASIS, and about making it clear that it isn't designed to be a run-time
lookup format.  I think some stronger words to this effect should be added
to the specification.

Use of "rule:*" attributes in genericode Schema - CodeList.xsd: I noted
that the Schema contains "rule:*" attributes that I added to make it
possible to identify documentation for a rule, as opposed to "just plain"
documentation.  This runs foul of some Schema validators, so I think it
needs to be changed to use some kind of "rule:*" elements instead of
attributes.

Need to add a conformance clause: yes indeed, we need to decide what
conformance means, and we may need some help from the OASIS folks with
this one.  I'm a little confused by this requirement, in truth.  The
specification itself is, in some sense, one giant conformance clause.

Adding one extra clause won't necessarily help things.  Of course, the
usual issue is that no two people interpret the same paper specification
the same way, such are the vagaries of language.  This typically means
that what is required is some kind of active (i.e. not passive)
conformance checking that isn't (as) open to matters of interpretation.

Two possible avenues for this (both which introduce schedule issues) are
(i) to put together a library of valid and invalid genericode examples,
and (ii) to have a "reference" validation application which is designed
primarily for correctness, and to which other applications can be
compared.  I have actually started writing an genericode (design-time)
validator, which I intend to make open source, and which could be used as
a reference validator is the TC wanted to go down that path.  Note,
however, that neither of these conformance solutions can control (i) that
way that information from genericode code lists is used at run-time, or
(ii) that users are correctly assigning canonical URIs to new code lists
and/or new versions of code lists.  Oh, I forgot a third option, we could
define conformance based on the Schema, on the understanding that it is
not able to check all of the rules which apply to genericode code lists.

Cheers, Tony.

--
Anthony B. Coates
Senior Partner
Miley Watts LLP
Experts In Data
UK: +44 (20) 8816 7700, US: +1 (239) 344 7700
Mobile/Cell: +44 (79) 0543 9026

Data standards participant: genericode, ISO 20022 (ISO 15022 XML),
UN/CEFACT, MDDL, FpML, UBL.
http://www.mileywatts.com/