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[Jon Bosak]

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