ebBP question: ComplexBTA

Since this TC is 
taking over maintenance of ebBP, here is a question related to the ebBP 2.0.4 
OASIS Standard.

 

Suppose we have a 
Business Collaboration involving a "Quote Request" and a "Quote 
Confirmation".  In RosettaNet these two document exchanges relate to 
the same PIP 3A1, "Request Quote".  In ebBP it makes sense to model 
this as a Business Transaction (or one of the UN/CEFACT pattern-specialized 
types of Business Transaction). From the point of view of the business 
collaboration that this exchange is part of, the interaction is atomic. The ebBP 
business transaction is a representation for a PIP.

 

Now suppose there is 
a need to enhance the Request Quote transaction to also cover the interactions 
that support it.  Perhaps the Seller needs to contact one or multiple 
suppliers or sub-contractors to obtain the information needed to generate the 
Quote Confirmation, and we want to model this.

 

The ebBP standard 
does have a construct for this purpose:  ComplexBusinessTransaction.  
If the Seller needs to invoke another business transaction, or even a complex 
business transaction (recursively involving other transactions), the current 
standard supports this.  It is also possible to define the complex 
transaction as a series of two transactions, and to associate "visibility" 
information to them. 

 

Now suppose the 
embedded transactions are not taking place sequentially, but in parallel.  
The ebBP standard has a way of expressing nested business flows, and they are 
available in the content model of the Collaboration elements. However, they are 
not available in the Complex Business 
Transaction.  I would like to see the content model of Complex Business 
Transaction Activity to include 

<xsd:group ref="collaborationGroup" 
maxOccurs="unbounded"/>

 

like the 
other ebBP elements. It would mean:  the nested 
flow of activities (perhaps including third parties, parallelism, decisions, 
forks, joins ..)  takes place between the incoming request and 
response.  Why is this not the supported in ebBP 2.0.4?    I 
can't see why a simple linear series of transactions is "atomic", but a 
parallel execution of those transactions is not. Or why a single recursively 
nested structure is, but some other structure is not. 

 

A difference between 
the CBTA content model and the Collaboration content model is the presence of 
the StatusVisibility element. This element could be included in the 
collaborationGroup too, leaving the access to the visibility information 
(using status request type of messages) up to further 
profiles. 

 

The above 
generalization is so .. general .. that I'm  probably missing 
something basic.

 

Any comments welcome 
..

 

Pim