Geoff, You have touched on a central issue that we've been grappling with for the past five+ years here on our group, and then into the ebXML world too.
Right now there is no clear way in XML for parties to exactly lay down the business rules for their information exchanges. This makes it difficult to get alignment around a single perscribed set of details. Unfortunately W3C XSD schema is promoted as "the answer" here - but as the initiated realize very quickly when they try this - XSD was never designed to solve this problem - nor equipped to be used in this role. All it does it tell you about the possible XML structure details you may use (read = lots of permutations!), and some simple data typing. Anyway - help is at hand. I'm currently chairing the new OASIS CAM TC - Content Assembly Mechanism - and we definately have the focus of solving this and providing those XML mechanisms. More details are available at : http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/cam/ We'll be sending out more details and specifics over the next couple of weeks, and I'll make sure those get distro'd to the list as well. We'll have draft spec's available in January that people can start working with their own EDI and XML content exchanges - and creating CAM definitions. Notice also that we're aiming to make this "business analyst" friendly XML - not arcane syntax that only a few specialist programmers can untangle. Solving the business need here is another of the pivotal pieces of XML/edi and ebXML. I'm confident that 2003 is going to see us finally address this with formal standards based approaches. Thanks, DW. ============================================== Message text written by "XMLEDI Group" >Geoff, in my experience, the party that does the mapping usually is the party with the most bargaining power/ clout. A lot is industry-dependant, e.g. the Retail sector is characterised by few large retailers and a lot of small suppliers. Typically, the large retailers can force its suppliers to perform mappings, and/or to use a web/EDI application to bridge the two systems. In my opinion it mostly boils down to a negotiation process between exchanging parties. kind regards, Robin __________________ tectrade Robin Declercq Project Manager Tel. +32(0)50/30 30 30 www.tectrade.net [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: Geoffrey Carter [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: maandag 2 december 2002 12:57 To: XMLEDI Group Subject: Mapping A question - it is rare to be able to get both partners in an interchange to use the same schema / standard. Someone has to map. What is the view as to who should best do this? As a general rule I prefer to take a message in the format of the issuer and map to my schemas that tie in with my back-end processes. Similarly I prefer to send a message in my format and let the recipient map. Is there a "best practice" view amongst the group? Geoff Carter < --- You are currently subscribed to xmledi-group as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
