Minutes of Atlantic UBL TC call 13 July 2005

[jon.bosak@sun.com]

MINUTES OF ATLANTIC UBL TC MEETING
15H00 - 17H00 UTC WEDNESDAY 13 JULY 2005

ATTENDANCE

   Jon Bosak (chair)
   Tony Coates
   Mark Crawford
   Mike Grimley
   Anne Hendry
   Sue Probert
   Bryan Rasmussen
   Zarella Rendon
   Paul Thorpe
   Kumar Sivaraman
   Sylvia Webb

STANDING ITEMS

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

      MC: 19-22 September 2005 CCTS working group meeting in
      Brussels; 23 September TC 154 meeting in the same place.
      Will need a UBL update for the TC 154 meeting.

   Liaison report: ATG

      MC: ATG met in Kongsburg and dealt with a number of issues,
      including the task given by FMG to evaluate the practicality
      of the two-schema proposal for accommodating UBL NDR as a
      parallel specification and two days spent on a discussion of
      local/global that included the chief architect from OAGI.

      With regard to local/global, OAGI conveyed input coming from
      both IBM and Microsoft pushing for a more global approach as
      essential to extensibility and WSDL requirements.  The group
      ultimately decided to change their NDRs in a more global
      direction, so that all ASBIEs except for one type (didn't
      remember which) will be global.

      With regard to the parallel schema proposal, the group
      validated that it does appear to work, though changes
      (chiefly wrt namespaces and modularity models) will have to
      be made to the UBL NDRs if/when they come into CEFACT;
      perhaps a single common reusable rather than a common basic
      and a common aggregate, or maybe a common aggregate for all
      the BIEs that are used for more than just UBL.  The group is
      coming to realize that we are going to have to
      namespace-control the common reusable modules to tie them to
      a specific context; this requires additional exploration.
      In sum, UBL will have to make some accommodations, but
      nothing fundamental.

      SW: What are the business benefits of two sets of NDRs?

      MC: It allows users who want the benefits of global scoping
      to have them, and the users who want the benefits of local
      scoping to have them, while validating the same instances.

      MC: Another couple of issues from the meeting: 1. ATG2 is
      adamant that it will not allow substitution groups, and
      2. it is adamant that there will only be one set of code
      lists that follow the CEFACT approach.  So we have to be
      aware of these positions.

   Liaison report: CEFACT plenary

      SP: The major development with regard to UBL was the signing
      of the agreement between OASIS and UN/CEFACT; the next step
      is to put details under that agreement.

      ACTION: JB to forward a copy of the OASIS/CEFACT agreement
      to the ubl list. [Done.]

   Subcommittee reports

      None (see Pacific call).

   Team reports

      None (see Pacific call).

   Review of Pacific and Europe/Asia calls

      From this week's Pacific call:

         | PENDING ACTION: JonB to schedule a discussion of CCTS
         | compliance that will include MarkC and MichaelD.
         | 
         | AGREED that MarkC and MichaelD need to agree on whether UBL
         | is or is not CCTS compliant.

      Discussion: MC and MD may or may not disagree on compliance;
      it's not clear.  Maybe we should send an inquiry to Gunther
      Stuhec as chair of the CCTS technical specification project
      with copies to MC and Mary Kay Blantz: Is UBL 1.0 CCTS
      compliant, and if not, what needs to be done to make it
      compliant?

DECISION ON REUSABLE

   See the minutes of this week's Pacific TC call.  Are we all OK
   with this now?

   MC: There is nothing normative about the spreadsheets, so we
   can segment the libraries however we want; that's not a CCTS
   issue.  A submission to TBG17 must be in their format and
   follow TBG17 procedures, which means (1) the CCs and BIEs can
   be stored in the ebXML registry per section 7, and (2) They
   must be constructed according to the CC and BIE rules in
   section 6.  TBG17 has been careful to design their spreadsheets
   to capture this information, including the context column; we
   can't harmonize CCs without the context information and the
   underlying CC.

   ACTION: Someone needs to compare our spreadsheets with the ones
   required by TBG17 following the TBG17 discussion 7/14.

AGENDA FOR OTTAWA MEETING

   MC/SP: Will try to participate by phone.

   JB: Everyone who wants to participate by phone should send me a
   note about their availability (or rather, the times that they
   will NOT be available) before we try to set the detailed
   schedule.

ACTION ITEM REVIEW (FROM MEETING OF 29 JUNE)

   PENDING ACTION: JonB to ask for a volunteer to serve as liaison to
   TBG17.

      Status: TimM will do this for the time being.

   PENDING ACTION: We are hoping for input from Henry Thompson
   regarding a way to accommodate Code Lists without using
   substitution groups.

      MC: What was the question to Henry Thompson?

      JB: See minutes for last couple of months.  [In email, Mavis
      has indicated that Marty Burns is now talking to Henry
      directly about this.]

      BR: Henry suggested redefines; I've had a bad experience
      with that, so started a discussion on schema-dev; the
      general opinion was that substitution groups don't have
      problems across processors, while redefines do.

      MC: ATG prohibits redefines as well as substitution groups.

      SW: What solution does ATG recommend?

      MC: We define the normative code schemas, so we don't need a
      solution; the solution is needed for customizers.

      TC: This is also needed to manage version changes.

      JB: Note that this is a primary agenda item for the TC call
      next week.  Mark will be unavailable for that call, so let's
      try for preliminary discussion in email.

      MC: We need to distinguish between what we do in our own
      NDRs and what customizers do; the same applies to code
      lists.

      BR: The current NDRs don't talk about customization.

      MC/JB: The purpose of the UBL NDRs is the creation of our
      own normative schemas.

      JB: Customization is a big issue for us, but we have to
      defer discussion of it until after the Ottawa meeting so
      that we can maintain our schedule.

      MC: And we must take into account CCTS "context."  CEFACT
      will be addressing this after the meeting in Lyon.

   PENDING ACTION: MavisC to send input to MarkC for ATG (see item
   #6 in the minutes of the 1 June Eurasia call).

      [From last meeting: StephenG: DavidK reports an updated set
      of CCTS schemas that appear to include the 1.0 attributes we
      need; we need to check on this next meeting.  The key is
      whether we actually have a channel here for conveying our
      inputs to ATG2.  And we need to know whether ATG2 has
      updated the schemas; the ones we have say "draft."]

      MC: ATG has updated the CCTS schemas, and I believe they are
      final pending feedback from implementation verification.  We
      hope to have the rules voted by ATG before Lyon and should
      be able to send a stable set in the next couple of weeks.
      Have asked MavisC to supply the two UBL attributes still
      missing from the CC types.  [Mavis has informed the chair by
      mail that she has mailed MC about this.]

   PENDING ACTION: JonB to review the current TC process and
   determine whether the SBS should be moved forward as a
   committee draft or a committee specification, the primary
   requirement being for a persistent URL.

      Status: Still pending.

   PENDING ACTION: JonB to contact KRLSC to see whether the June
   2006 meeting can be hosted in Seoul.

      Status: Still pending.

   PENDING ACTION: JonB to seek a host for a March 2006 meeting in
   Brussels.

      Status: Still pending.

   PENDING ACTION: JonB to revise the FAQ linked from the UBL TC
   page.

      Status: Still pending.

NDR WORK SESSION

   Work item: "Sign off on the 1.0 SBS."

      No objections to adopting it.  [So the TC has signed off on
      this, and we are now waiting on JB's determination noted
      above.]

   Work item: Check on whether CCTS provides a mechanism for
   categorizing elements by domain that could be used to address
   the requirement to subdivide the Reusables.

      SP: This is a difficult subject, as things can be used in
      many different contexts.  The Context column should identify
      the context in which ABIEs and BIEs should be registered;
      it's not for categorizing reusable components.

      JB: As this will be discussed in TBG17, we should pick this
      up after we see the outcome of that thinking.

FOR NEXT WEEK

   Discuss use of ATG2 data type schemas.

   Check on the status of CCTS schemas wrt attributes needed for
   UBL.

   Continue the discussion of ANY and the other requests from
   BryanR, to wit:

      (1) A reconsideration of our prohibition of XSD ANY, because
      there are regional laws requiring the inclusion of specific
      information, and we need an extensible content area to
      handle this; (2) Restrictions on strings in UBL content to
      ensure that the content consists of more than white space,
      for example through length or minlength facets [MG: This may
      relate to the CCTS schema item.]; (3) Reconsideration of our
      prohibition of appinfo, because there are many cases where
      one element is conditional on another; this would give
      Scehamatron (for example) the data it needs to do
      conditional/contextual validation.

   Formulate a specific question or set of questions regarding
   CCTS compliance (see under "Review of Pacific and Europe/Asia
   calls" above).

Jon Bosak
Chair, OASIS UBL TC