Minutes of Pacific UBL TC call 16|17 May 2005

[jon.bosak@sun.com]

MINUTES OF PACIFIC UBL TC MEETING
00H30 - 02H30 UTC TUESDAY 17 MAY 2005

ATTENDANCE

   Jon Bosak (chair)
   Micah Dubinko
   Stephen Green
   Tim McGrath
   Sylvia Webb

STANDING ITEMS

   Additions to the calendar (http://ibiblio.org/bosak/ubl/calendar.htm)

      Note 19 May meeting in Copenhagen (mail from MikkelB).

   Liaison report: Tax XML TC

      SylviaW: Direct Tax SC lost their chair, which has slowed
      down their input. The TC has come up with a list of about
      20 additional elements, but has decided not to submit new
      doc types because they would just duplicate the ones already
      submitted by IDA and OGC. They plan instead to review and
      evaluate the work of our TC and comment. They will get
      together the list of additions for us next week.

   Liaison report: eBSC

      SylviaW: The meeting at NIST in Gaithersburg was pretty well
      attended -- 30-35 people with representatives from all major
      business standards bodies. ANSI presented a portal they are
      developing that will list all business standards under
      development; this will be available free to the public. They
      have received commitments from a number of organizations,
      including OASIS. There were also presentations from AIAG
      and OAG talking about the challenges of standards
      implementation. Minutes should be out in the next few weeks.
      There were no UBL-related developments. No new meeting was
      scheduled.

   Subcommittee report: HISC

      MicahD: Getting ready for XTECH in Amsterdam, KenH too. Will
      be getting feedback from implementors there. Regarding the
      forms input spec, we know of an XForms implementation and an
      HTML implementation.

   Subcommittee report: SBSC

      StephenG: Just posted another package today. KenH should be
      changing the generator to produce URIs tomorrow. There will
      be an SBSC meeting tomorrow. Question: are we at the CD
      stage yet?  (JonB: we will be when the TC has approved it.)
      The URIs are being assigned as if it were a CD. (JonB:
      That's right.) The SSC didn't meet last week.

   Team report: IDA/OGC

      TimM: Not sure whether this exists any more now that all the
      consultants have reached the end of their contracts. I see
      the team being replaced by the group that DK is trying to
      establish at the 19 May meeting, which will consider forming
      a European LSC. The IDA/OGC team has achieved its purpose
      and can be retired.

   Team report: COML

      TimM: CrimsonLogic got feedback in Hangzhou. The digital
      signature issue sparked interest from CN and DK reps; they
      will discuss with CL whether the CL model satisfies
      everyone's requirements. China has offered to contribute
      their doctypes; this is potentially a future direction for
      the COML team, because the HK group has been involved in the
      Digital Trade and Transport Network (DTTN), which covers
      about 60 doctypes related to shipping. The CN group is
      prepared to work with UBL similar to CL to build their
      requirements into UBL documents and have already based their
      document models on the UBL 1.0 libraries. So we could extend
      the existing COML team to be a "Paperless Trade Document"
      team along the lines suggested by APEC.  Whether this should
      be considered for UBL 2.0 will depend on resources.

   New Eurasia TC call

      TimM: This was proposed in the minutes of the Hangzhou
      plenary. We're expecting a lot of content input from the
      Northern European economies as well as NDR input from Asia.
      A third weekly call would fill a logical hole in our TC call
      schedule (the one that doesn't work for
      U.S. participants). The probable time would be 0800 UTC,
      which is 16h00 in Hong Kong.

      JonB: Acknowledge the need for this, but see risk in
      coordinating with the other calls; the only reason the
      current split schedule works is because JonB and a few
      others provide a bridge. TimM's offer to chair is a big
      help, but we will need at least one person from the NDR team
      to commit to the calls.

      ACTION: We will discuss the proposed Eurasia TC call in the
      next Atlantic TC call.

CONTENT WORK

   The discussion, led by TimM, reviewed items reported on in the
   Hangzhou plenary. Highlights:

    - DK will revamp the issues list format before turning it back
      to BettyH.

    - We aim to have all the new stuff added by the end of May, so
      getting Tax XML input next week should work out fine.

    - We will have to think about the role of parties in context;
      for example, 9-10 different kinds of party have been
      identified by COML. CN and DK are working on a white paper
      explaining how UBL can better model Party without breaking
      backward compatibility with 1.0.

    - We will also need to add more buyer-to-buyer info
      (references for the buyer's internal system).

    - There are also proposals to add information for partial
      payments and a generic document reference.

    - Japanese "InspectionDate" as our familiar example of a local
      data element requirement is not accurate; it should be
      "InspectionCode" -- change the slides!

    - We're getting feedback from both Europe and Asia that our
      customization guidelines don't work for them; they need to
      have a methodology for the models themselves, not simply for
      the schemas. DK is working up a proposal for how to
      accomplish this.

    - Both JP and DK are prepared to assist in the HISC analysis
      of input and output forms, both for the existing doc set and
      the extended one. JP is eager to get involved in interface
      design.

    - The IDD needs an additional column for default display
      labels. This need is not met by the existing "Business
      terms" column, because it's not populated for English, and
      in the other languages it contains a description rather than
      a label. In particular, local users need to relate elements
      to cells in paper documents. To do this, there should be a
      label for every BIE in the library, and the English label
      should be the label in the UN Layout Key. This is more
      complicated than it sounds, because some boxes are occupied
      by the data in multiple BIEs, and some BIEs are spread out
      over several boxes. All of the LSCs are willing to populate
      a new label column, but we need expert help in associating
      the labels with the UN Layout Key.

    - We need a good change management system for translations. In
      particular, we need to assign a version number to each BIE.

    - The Reusables are continuing to grow with things that are
      actually specific to a given context. It is proposed that we
      distinguish "common" BIEs (that is, used by more than one
      doc type) from "core" BIEs (that is, used by many doc types)
      from BIEs that are used in only one doc type. JP is working
      up a proposal for this. Some of us are skeptical that this
      distinction can be made cleanly. Some believe that such a
      change will make it easier to align with CEFACT CC. Clearly,
      any change in this direction will mean a change to the NDRs.
      In 2-3 weeks We will have a set of 1.0 spreadsheets that
      have been divided up per the proposal in order to
      demonstrate the idea. To minimize disruption to HISC and UBL
      1.0 implementations, it may be best to keep all the current
      Reusables where they are (as "core").

   Next week we will analyze the outcome of the European
   discussion and look at the update to the issues list.

Jon Bosak
Chair, OASIS UBL TC