RE: [emergency] HAVE Conformance vs. Documentation vs. Released Schemas

David,

Although I appreciate your fervent endorsement of CAM ( I use it too – you can’t beat the price!) – CAM is but one of many tools that can accomplish the work. There is no “one tool for all” in the world of standards.

OASIS has been discussing the option of a EM Web site for things like Sample XML, Stylesheets and I am sure CAM files can be included…

Here’s the rub though – I do not want to be in the position of promoting a single tool and I really do not think the entire EM TC group email is the place for this push. If anything the Adoption Committee would be the place to consider the options of using CAM – and RECOMMENDING it for certain uses if they agree.

I would prefer to see this vehicle for idea exchange (the EM TC Group email list) used for discussions on the Standards.

In addition I would heavily question your estimates of time saved since the IEPD PROCESS is more about requirements gathering and business driven designs than XML/XSD development. To be a little blunt – and please forgive that, but I feel it is time for this statement – I have been feeling that you have been “shoving CAM down my throat”…we have many people on the TC and some have developed their own tools or even have vendor products that are very good and very sound to support this work. This forum is not the place to push the “one tool for all” agenda.

There is no place in a “one tool for all” approach…a simple example could be the popularity of Spreadsheets – they are fantastic for keeping things like Managed Lists – no other tool is any better – unless you are in a diverse or enterprise environment and people make several copies and edit them all differently – then they are a complete and utter nightmare and should be removed to put in place a true Business Intelligence tool set….this is a real world example. We cannot determine how every standard will be used and how it should be implemented – that is counterproductive to interoperability.

Again – I do appreciate your enthusiasm and I think you bring a whole lot to the table for our efforts – but I respectfully ask that you consider the intent of the vehicle before endorsing one product so heavily and repeatedly.

Thanks,

Lee

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men. ~Bill Beattie

From: David RR Webber (XML) [mailto:david@drrw.info]
Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 11:47 AM
To: Lee Tincher
Cc: 'Gary Ham'; emergency@lists.oasis-open.org; 'Dwarkanath,Sukumar - INTL'; 'McGarry,Donald P.'; 'Ron Lake'; 'Ram Kumar'
Subject: RE: [emergency] HAVE Conformance vs. Documentation vs. Released Schemas

Lee,

Ease of implementation is key. That is why we have put together all the tools in CAM for NIEM IEPDs.

This has taken an 800 hour IEPD process and made it 80 hours - including ramp up time.

What I am envisioning for EDXL however is that creating a profile using CAM should take one hour or less - including downloading CAM and installing.

I'll put together some briefing slides to illustrate - along with samples. We really can show people how to save potentially hundreds of hours of implementation time.

This week though I'm busy finishing testing on the new release of CAM 1.7.1 - so it will next week sometime.

Thanks, DW

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: [emergency] HAVE Conformance vs. Documentation vs.
Released Schemas
From: "Lee Tincher" <ltincher@evotecinc.com>
Date: Sun, March 14, 2010 8:02 am
To: "'Ron Lake'" <rlake@galdosinc.com>, "'Ram Kumar'"
<kumar.sydney@gmail.com>
Cc: "'Gary Ham'" <gham@grandpaham.com>, "'David RR Webber (XML)'"
<david@drrw.info>, <[email protected]>,
"'Dwarkanath,Sukumar - INTL'" <Sukumar_Dwarkanath@sra.com>,
"'McGarry,Donald P.'" <dmcgarry@mitre.org>

All,

While I agree with the concepts I would urge you to be very careful here. Gary Ham taught me many years ago the “A Standard Ai’nt a Standard if it isn’t used”. In his white paper he focuses on ease of implementation as a key issue. What you are describing below is a series of best practices that should be recommendations from the Adoption Committee. To consider this as part of the guidance of using the standard will make many developers just turn away from it and the result will be less implementation – thus less interoperability.

Profiles are nothing more than further restraints and element definition enhancements/restrictions to the approved standard that need to be understood by two or more exchange partners. By ensuring that the “Profile” validates against the original schema than any other entity that uses complete/original Standard Schema can consume it….sharing your “further restrained” schema may be desirable from an implementation standpoint, but that depends on your intended use – and we cannot assume that everyone intends to use profiles exactly as we do….in many cases a profile will be shared between only 2 exchange partners and no one else needs to know the restrictions enforced by the profile….

Thanks,

Lee

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men. ~Bill Beattie

From: Ron Lake [mailto:rlake@galdosinc.com]
Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 4:39 AM
To: Ram Kumar
Cc: Gary Ham; David RR Webber (XML); Lee Tincher; emergency@lists.oasis-open.org; Dwarkanath,Sukumar - INTL; McGarry,Donald P.
Subject: RE: [emergency] HAVE Conformance vs. Documentation vs. Released Schemas

Here here!!

I would go farther and state that we need registries in support of this interoperability governance - registries that manage schemas, code lists, schema documentation etc. Simply posting schemas on a web site (and claiming this is a registry) is NOT sufficient and it will not work.

Cheers

Ron

From: Ram Kumar [mailto:kumar.sydney@gmail.com]
Sent: Sun 3/14/2010 12:23 AM
To: Ron Lake
Cc: Gary Ham; David RR Webber (XML); Lee Tincher; emergency@lists.oasis-open.org; Dwarkanath,Sukumar - INTL; McGarry,Donald P.
Subject: Re: [emergency] HAVE Conformance vs. Documentation vs. Released Schemas

If we want to achieve interoperability, two things are required:

1. Interoperability of data - schemas are required

2. Guidelines on how the schemas should be used (what is optional, what is not, what code lists to use, etc) to enable interoperability. This will help the interoperating parties to use these guidelines to ensure consistent implementation of the schemas. - This is part of interoperability governance

Therefore, using a set of schemas and expecting systems implementing the schemas without any guidelines to ensure consistent implementation, to interoperate is virtually impossible.

xPIL and other CIQ artifacts have been designed to be application independent and vertical industry independent, and importantly global (ability to handle 240+ country addresses and many name formats), it is up to the users using these schemas to ensure that they define proper guidelines to customise these schemas for implementation to enable interoperability.

Regards,

Ram

Chair, OASIS CIQ TC

On 14 March 2010 19:06, Ron Lake <rlake@galdosinc.com> wrote:

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