Minutes of Pacific UBL TC call 25|26 August 2008

MINUTES OF PACIFIC UBL TC MEETING
TUESDAY 26 AUGUST 2008

ATTENDANCE

Jon Bosak (chair)

Anne Hendry

G. Ken Holman

Tim McGrath (vice chair)

Andy Schoka

STANDING ITEMS

Additions to the calendar:

http://ubl.xml.org/events

TM: TonyC informs us that the Call for Papers for the XML

2008 conference has finally gone out.

GKH: Have submitted proposals for an XML overview and a UBL

overview.

We note that IDEAlliance's Joy Blake is now Joy Donat.

Congratulations, Joy!

Liaison reports

TM: UN/CEFACT ATG2 have announced that their NDR version 3

is now at ODP5 (public review from 18 August to 20

September).

http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl-dev/200808/msg00007.html

Do we have further input to this beyond the contributions

we've already made (participation in ATG2 working sessions,

review of hybrid approach, contribution of code list

methodology)?

JB: As we've said on a number of occasions, we don't

contemplate another major release of UBL and therefore don't

expect any changes to our 2.0 NDR any time in the

foreseeable future.  Like OAG, RosettaNet, and other

business standard development organizations, we have a large

installed base to protect, and like those other

organizations, it's going to be a long time before we're

ready to make any changes to our naming and design rules.

The reality is that there will be a number of NDRs in use

for many years to come.  In our view, the main value of the

current work in UN/CEFACT lies in semantic harmonization,

establishing a common set of semantic primitives that will

allow conversion between the different business languages

that are already in use.

TM: Some people doubt that such conversions are possible.

JB: We know of nothing that would prevent interoperability

between document instances based on UBL and document

instances based on other XML business languages caused

simply by differences in their naming and design rules.  If

anyone does know of an interoperability problem caused by

differences in naming and design rules (as opposed to

differences in vocabulary and data modeling), we would be

interested to hear about it.  A study done in ATG a couple

of years ago concluded that it would be trivial to generate

different schemas from the same data model using UN/CEFACT

NDRs or UBL NDRs; in other words, it's the semantic

harmonization that matters, not the NDRs.  If this turns out

not to be the case, then the harmonization work is largely

beside the point.  UBL has been based from the beginning on

the assumption that semantic harmonization is the key to

interoperability, and we'll continue to maintain that belief

until proven otherwise.

Subcommittee report: PSC

TM: Nothing this week.

Subcommittee report: TSC

AS: TSC meetings will restart Thursday next week (4

September) at 09:00 U.S. east coast time using the new UBL

TC conference bridge and an Adobe Connect session.  We will

start with items already identified in work with Danish

Standards and include requirements from USDOT's Kansas City

initiative as that evolves.

AH: Will be participating in the work of the subcommittee.

TM: We need to establish a policy for how much new material

we're going to include in 2.1.

AGREED that we will certainly address issues pending from

TBG3, in particular those relating to shipment and

consignment.  Beyond that, however, we will require the

addition of new BIEs to be justified by specific business

requirements; the existence of BIEs in legacy EDI will not

be sufficient in itself.

Review of Atlantic call

No comments.

MINUTES OF THE UBL TC MEETING IN MONTRÉAL

Pending.

INTERNATIONAL DATA DICTIONARY

JB: We are holding public review of the initial set pending

completion of the updates to the Japanese and Danish versions.

GKH: Public collaboration on Catalan has begun on ubl.xml.org.

ACTION: JB to send GKH the partial translations for Hungarian,

Lithuanian, and Turkish.

UBL WORK SCHEDULE

ACTION (1/8): JB to revise the work schedule spreadsheet.

Pending finalization of the BII schedule in September.

NAMING AND DESIGN RULES

JB: MC and JB finished content edits last week; JB not starting

copy and formatting edit with BH while MC is on vacation.

CUSTOMIZATION GUIDELINES

TM to make another content edit, then back to JB for another

copy edit Friday; meanwhile, GKH finishes a couple of

incomplete sections.  We intend to approve the draft for

circulation to the entire TC following next week's Pacific TC

call.

UBL 2.1 ISSUES LIST

ACTION (12/18): TM to populate the new issues list with all

currently known UBL 2.1 issues.

Pending.

2008 TC MEETING SCHEDULE

19-23 January 2009 in Fremantle

http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl/200808/msg00010.html

Expected attendance: TM, MC, GKH; possibly AS, MG, AH

April/May 2009

East coast North America (probably in DC area or possibly in

Ottawa) has been suggested, but it's possible that we will

have an opportunity to meet with UN/CEFACT at their 20-24

April 2009 Forum in Rome.

August 2009

We are agreed on a preliminary plan to meet the week before

or the week after the Balisage conference in Montréal; this

would be 3-7 August or 10-14 August 2009, depending on which

is chosen for Balisage.  It's possible that we will wish to

hold a plenary in conjunction with the UN/CEFACT Forum in

Sapporo 28 September - 2 October, in which case the Montréal

meeting will be considered a working session.

TC CONCALL SCHEDULE

Regular schedule for the next couple of months.

GKH: On west coast 9/15 and 9/22; can probably still participate,

but may be late in joining.

Jon Bosak
Chair, OASIS UBL TC