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[ubl-ndrsc] Minutes for 21 August 2002 UBL NDR SC meeting

From: Eve Maler
To: [email protected]
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 13:12:00 -0000

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Subject: [ubl-ndrsc] Minutes for 21 August 2002 UBL NDR SC meeting

From: "Eve L. Maler" <[email protected]>
To: ubl-ndrsc <[email protected]>
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 13:12:02 -0400

Minutes for 21 August 2002 UBL NDR SC meeting

1. Roll call (quorum is 8)
     * Bill Burcham        YES
     * Mavis Cournane      YES
     * Mark Crawford       YES
     * Fabrice Desr�       no
     * Matt Gertner        no
     * Arofan Gregory      YES (left y:28)
     * Jessica Glace       YES
     * Michael Grimley     YES
     * Eduardo Gutentag    YES
     * Eve Maler           YES
     * Sue Probert         no
     * Lisa Seaburg        YES
     * Gunther Stuhec      YES (partial)
     * Paul Thorpe         YES
     * Kris Ketels         no

    Quorum reached.

2. Acceptance of minutes of previous meeting

    14 August 2002 as amended by putting "regrets" on Bill's line:
    http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl-ndrsc/200208/msg00017.html

    Accepted.

3. Adoption of agenda/schedule planning

    Adopted.  We will end the call after 1.5 hours.

    We will do an increasing amount of NDR document review and
    development leading up to September 18.  Mavis has some travel
    around that time that will mean a bit of extra coordination.

    August 21:
    - Jessica and Mike might have to leave early
    - NDR document review
    - OO and containership papers and methodology implications
    - Date/time: OO implications and comments received
    - Finish embedded documentation decisions
    - Local qualified vs. local unqualified vs. global elements
    August 28:
    - Regrets from Eve; Mavis will chair and send agenda
    - Mark may join late (from Geneva)
    - NDR document review (look at external comments)
    - Discuss and decide schema location options
    September 4:
    - Jessica and Mike might have to leave early
    - Regrets from Paul Thorpe
    - NDR document review
    September 11:
    - Regrets from Paul Thorpe, possibly from folks in Geneva
    - NDR document review
    - Mike Rowell from OAG: intro to the OAG design rules
    September 18:
    - Jessica and Mike might have to leave early
    - Regrets from Gunther Stuhec
    - Approve documents for review distribution #3
    September 25:
    - No meeting; work on other UBL tasks instead
    October 1-4:
    - F2F #5 in Burlington, MA, USA
    - Everyone should try to reserve the Burlington Marriott
    - Agenda ideas:
      . Overview of CCTS changes
      . Containership (OO, normalization, methodology, etc.)
      . Second-tier attributes (impacted by CCTS work)
      . Date/time (impacted by CCTS work)
      . Content referencing (impacted by CCTS work)

    A NDR document improvements IN PROGRESS
    A+ Embedded documentation NEARLY DONE
    A Code lists IN PROGRESS
    A Dates and times IN PROGRESS
    A Nested supplementary components IN PROGRESS
    A Identifier references and whether to pass content by reference
    A- Local vs. global elements
    B+ Containership IN PROGRESS
    B Updating guiding principles IN PROGRESS
    B Modnamver URN scheme DONE
    B Modnamver schema location IN PROGRESS
    B Referencing of content, e.g. for attachments
    C Facets
    C Wildcards/open content
    C Nillability
    C Aggregation of similar information for XPath V1.0 addressing

4. Action item review

    Lisa:
    - NEW: Send out the normalization paper.
    - NEW: Ask Tim to fix the Identifier->ID spreadsheet formula bug.
    - NEW: Check whether we have an inappropriate rule on treating
      RTs as reserved.

    Arofan:
    - Update the embedded documentation paper according to August 7
      decisions.

    Mavis:
    - Update the issues spreadsheet with Eve's comments.
    - Amend NDR document to add example code for Period. IN PROGRESS
    - Update NDR draft 15 with comments from our August 14 comments.
      IN PROGRESS
    - Update issues spreadsheet to contain externally received NDR
      comments.

    Eve:
    - Finish draft of code list document. IN PROGRESS
    - See if Mavis might be available for August 28 call. DONE
    - NEW: Raise awareness of the containership issue to the CSC.

    Gunther:
    - Write content referencing paper. IN PROGRESS
    - Send date/time NDR snippets to Mavis. IN PROGRESS
    - With Arofan, prepare samples of how to handle second-tier
      attributes. IN PROGRESS
    - Bring the donkey to Burlington!

    Bill:
    - Update modnamver paper by September 11.
    - Start an email thread proposing a schema location solution.
    - NEW: Start a thread on RTs in aggregates and possible NDR
      document bugs in this area.

    Jessica:
    - Review 0pt65 release draft. IN PROGRESS

5. Reports from other groups

    Lisa and others are working frenetically on the LC SC distribution.
    There are some issues still outstanding, but the F2F will provide
    the best opportunity for hashing these out.

6. NDR document review

    a. Top-level message/element naming issue
    b. Continue reviewing NDR draft 15, Section 10
    c. New principle wording
       See this message:
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl-ndrsc/200208/msg00025.html
    d. New rule for naming of lists
       Do we need to discuss this further based on Bill's input?

    These were all deferred.

http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl-ndrsc/200208/msg00019.html

    e. Identifier->ID problem

       It appears that the remaining cases of an element being called
       FooIdentifier happened because the Foo.Identifier.Identifier
       truncation is happening after (or instead of) the truncation
       of Identifier to ID.  The naming formula needs to be fixed in
       this respect.

       In this discussion, we noticed that RTs are freely being used
       as property terms (e.g., Foo.Amount.Amount) in the spreadsheet.
       There's supposed to be a rule treating RTs as reserved keywords,
       but we haven't done this to date and the formulas work fine
       without it.  So we don't recommend any change to the rules on
       this.

    f. RTs for aggregates

       Bill noted that Details has been used as the RT for aggregates.
       (Mark noted that, technically, Details is not an RT but just
       serves in that spot.)  Bill is proposing that the spreadsheet
       offer a more "real" RT here by supplying the name of the
       type of the property.  For example, you'd have Order.Quote.Quote
       instead of Order.Quote.Details, and then the two Quotes would
       collapse according to our existing rules.  Mark's reading of
       the latest CCTS work is that this is not possible.

7. OO and containership papers and methodology implications

    OO paper:
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl-ndrsc/200208/msg00014.html

    Containership paper:
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ubl/ndrsc/current/p-gregory-containers-02.doc

    There is also the normalization material from Tim's methodology
    paper, which has been extracted into a new paper that Lisa will
    point us to.

    Several of us are concerned that the OO metaphor (operating on XML as
    objects) and the relational metaphor (doing normalization of XML
    data) might be being inappropriately applied to the job of creating
    usable XML message formats.  The concern with the OO approach is that
    directly serializing a programmatic view of data into XML might
    reflect only one back-end application's preferences.  The concern
    with the relational approach is that tables aren't linear while XML
    is, which leads to anomalous design results.

    It was also noted that it's not really fair to paint the various
    approaches as "OO", "relational", and "XML" since (for example)
    OO programming uses containers all the time.  There is some sympathy
    for the view that it's useful to have a model standing behind the
    schema; having that model be OO vs. E/R doesn't matter.  Also, it
    was noted that having flat XML that looks exactly like database
    data makes it easier (naturally) to put it in the database.

    In practical terms, the following goals and principles may be
    impacted by decisions in this area:

    - Speed of completion
    - Leveraging XML technology
    - Readable instances
    - "Various and sundry"
    - Customizability
    - Abstracting away from back-end applications

    We may be missing some requirements based on the following:

    - Real-world experience with UBL used in back-end systems (such
      as SAP's)
    - Requirements based on relational manipulation of XML data
      (such as normalization)

    It will be essential to hash this out at the upcoming F2F, because
    time is of the essence.  It's a concern that material is going out
    in the LC SC distribution that does not reflect the NDR SC's
    concerns about containership.

8. Date/time: OO implications and comments received
    Date/time paper:
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ubl/ndrsc/current/p-stuhec-datetime-05.doc
    Comments from Mike Grimley:
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl-ndrsc/200208/msg00009.html
    Comments from Bob Miller (already discussed?):
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl-ndrsc/200207/msg00008.html

    Deferred.

9. Finish embedded documentation decisions
    See here for previous decisions and status:
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl-ndrsc/200208/msg00011.html
   - Where to insert all the documentation elements in each XSD
     construct?
   - Make sure to at least provide a reference to the code list
     document, which puts some requirements on documentation.
   - Need to include rules on which fields need to be present for
     which XSD constructs.
   - The UBL schema modules need to incorporate XHTML Basic properly
     (e.g., declaring its prefix? importing the schema?).
   - We need to say explicitly what XHTML Basic version number.

    Also see here for an idea related to XHTML CLASS keywords:
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl-ndrsc/200208/msg00026.html

    Deferred.

10. Local qualified vs. local unqualified vs. global elements

11. Adjourn

     Adjourned z:07.

-- 
Eve Maler                                        +1 781 442 3190
Sun Microsystems                            cell +1 781 883 5917
XML Web Services / Industry Initiatives      eve.maler @ sun.com