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Re: The Ubiquity of XML - again.
"XML's got the edge so long as the tags are in a language recognizable
to the human user..."
You're beating a dead horse again, Bill. I think every COBOL (ADD,
MOVE, DISPLAY), Java (String, Boolean, true, false, BufferedReader),
Perl (open, map, use, require), XSLT (when, choose, contains, child,
item), and C++ (private, class, new, delete, void, short) programmer in
the world can read and write some English. And programmers are the ones
who will write the code to map XML e-business messages.
"...but to the average computer program it's a dead heat."
Don't think in terms of the load on the poor program. Think in terms of
the effort required of the poor programmer!
"One of the examples I seem to recall from years gone by was
DeliveryDate. Is that the exact date upon which a given thing will be
delivered or is it the date by which a given thing must be delivered or
the approximate date upon which the given thing was delivered?"
Take a look at the UBL Office supplies Despatch Advice example instance
at http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0. There's not much
ambiguity in
<cbc:ActualDeliveryDateTime>2003-02-14T13:30:00</cbc:ActualDeliveryDateTime>
is there? This means "the date of the delivery [when it actually takes]
place." If you want a different type of "DeliveryDate", browse through
the Reusable BIEs spreadsheet, where you'll see "PromisedDateTime" and
"RequestedDeliveryDateTime" also defined.
"...we're soon going to get to the point where we need implementation
guides to explain each user's perspective on how to implement the
respective XML messages...isn't that one of the reason's that everyone
hates EDI?"
"Hate" is a bit of a strong word. But there is something better, and we
can all move on. I know something about automated EDI implementation
guide editors - I invented the first commercially viable one. Frankly,
I don't see as much need for schema "implementation guides," as UBL
messages are built up from fairly well-defined and constrained ebXML
core components. Just how many DeliveryDates are applicable to a
(Dispatch Advice) Delivery. Details component? The same wasn't true of
EDI - X12 and especially EDIFACT. EDI standards didn't come "usable"
straight out of the box. Take the EDIFACT DESADV. It's way too
open-ended: how would you ever know which DTM to stick the actual
delivery date? My gawd! And there're hundreds of possible qualifiers.
Only with an IG would you be able to constrain the EDIFACT message
enough so someone could get her arms around it!
William J. Kammerer
Novannet
Columbus, OH 43221-3859 USA
+1 (614) 487-0320
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Chessman" <
To: "EDI-L Mailing List" <
Sent: Friday, 04 February, 2005 08:10 PM
Subject: RE: [EDI-L] The Ubiquity of XML - again.
I knew this was all leading back to the BSR. 8-) I'm out of the loop
on BSR, but seven or eight years ago it seems to me it was having a lot
of trouble getting traction because the semantics were the problem.
Given a list of common XML tags, we have Terminology, even a hierarchy
of terminology, but not Semantics. I have plenty of terms, but what do
they mean? One of the examples I seem to recall from years gone by was
DeliveryDate. Is that the exact date upon which a given thing will be
delivered or is it the date by which a given thing must be delivered or
the approximate date upon which the given thing was delivered?
As I said, I'm out of the loop on that. Would I be safe in assuming
that headway has been made? If not, we're soon going to get to the
point where we need implementation guides to explain each user's
perspective on how to implement the respective XML messages...isn't that
one of the reason's that everyone hates EDI?
Please do not think that I am suggesting any advantage of EDI tags vs.
XML tags. I am emphatically not. The net is XML's got the edge so long
as the tags are in a language recognizable to the human user, but to the
average computer program it's a dead heat.
Best regards,
Bill Chessman
Inovis
-----Original Message-----
From: William J. Kammerer [mailto:
Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 3:30 PM
To: EDI-L Mailing List
Subject: Re: [EDI-L] The Ubiquity of XML - again.
Raising this issue of English language tags is itself beating a dead
horse. See a brilliant exposition entitled "English Language Tags,"
addressed to the ebXML Core Components Team on 31 Jan 2001, at
http://lists.ebxml.org/archives/ebxml-core/200101/msg00183.html.
And do the EDIFACT tags, like MEA or BEG, mean anything to anyone who
can't make out English?
Nevertheless, I'll add this "deficiency" of XML - as applied to
interoperable B2B standards - to the list.
William J. Kammerer
Novannet
Columbus, OH 43221-3859 USA
+1 (614) 487-0320
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