Tuesday 30th April, 2002, 7:00-10:00 AM California time

Attendees: Tim McGrath, Marion Royal, Peter Yim, Sally Chan, Sue Probert, Debbie Quezadaz, Arofan Gregory, Joseph Chiusano

Apologies: Mike Adcock (on leave), John Larmouth (economic issues regarding calling from UK)

• Joe Chiusano to take minutes.

• Tim McGrath welcomed new member Debbie Quedazad from Oracle.

• Previous minutes accepted.

• Several subcommittee members raised some issues regarding minutes from 16/04/02 call. The minutes were corrected, but have not yet been posted.

• Tim will ask Lisa Seaburg to post corrected minutes [ACTION ITEM].

• Tim re-expressed his concerns regarding attendance.

• Tim had asked Lisa to prepare a summary of attendances over last 10 weeks - on basis of that, Tim contacted those who had not attended in that time frame and asked if they would like to change their status to Observer. Some said yes, some did not respond. This changed to number of members from 32 to 30 - however, we are also continuing to pick up new members.

• The subcommittee discussed how to approach the issue of those who did not respond. In lieu of dropping these members, it was decided that Tim would send the names of these individuals to the listserv, thereby giving subcommittee members an opportunity to contact them if they would like [ACTION ITEM].

• SALLY. Contact Frank and  Arofan to provide the business process definition for SCM.

• Sally has contacted Frank, but still needs to talk more to him regarding what needs to be done.

• Need to determine what documents are must used within Supply Chain Management, and see if there is a business process that they can define. They will then work from the business process and select the documents.

• Sally will also look to Boeing to see if there is a business process than can be used.

• Additional discussion:

• Tim commented that the SCM is a very broad field - therefore, somewhere along the line, we will need to make an educated decision as to what constitutes common practice

• Sue Probert commented that the upcoming eBTWG meetings may help in that discussions with other organizations may uncover items from the procurement side that can be leveraged (even though SCM and procurement are not the same thing).

• Tim expressed his pleasure that a dialog has been happening. We should aim to have a model (between now and the end of May) that shows where the documents fit in, to complement the work done at Barcelona.

• TIM agreed to produce a next stage draft of the Process/Methodology paper and to send this to Lisa.

• Paper is in process.

• Tim reminded everyone that four weeks ago, he posted a Powerpoint presentation from Luc Lucmouchot (France, healthcare industry)

• Tim asked the subcommittee to review the presentation and provide feedback to Tim [ACTION ITEM]. The feedback can be incorporated into the methodology paper.

• TIM agreed to produce a notice on this which would be sent to the lcsc and comment lists to inform and to invite participation.

• Already covered in agenda item #3.

• TIM.  put together a short email reminder on meeting attendance to go to the list. 

• Already covered in agenda item #3.

• MIKE. Continue with the Dependencies paper.

• Mike unable to attend call - the paper is presumably on hold.

• ALL. Contribute thoughts about rules, dependencies etc to Mike.

• Tim mentioned that Mike’s not being on call shouldn’t prevent the subcommittee from discussing this topic on the listserv. He asked the subcommittee to contribute their thoughts about rules, dependencies, etc. to Mike [ACTION ITEM].

• ALL. NDR Global Attributes issues. It was agreed that the group should study the relevant material in readiness for discussion on next week's agenda.

• This is regarding two global attributes issues discussed in the NDR subcommittee.

• Tim has discussed this with both Eve Mahler and Gunter Stuhec. Tim stated that the issue now goes back to Gunter, to clarify which specific attributes he was referencing.

• To chase up Arofan on the context paper for discussion next Tuesday conference call.

• Arofan net yet on call when this was discussed. Sue will see him this week in California - she will mention this to him [ACTION ITEM].

• Need to clarify what is required in terms of context.

• Ask Arofan for progress report on his areas (Context Assembly, Tools & Techniques) in time for next Tuesday’s conference call.

• Arofan net yet on call when this was discussed. Skipped this item

• The Editorial Team has been compiling comments on the UBL LCSC Distribution. They have set up a central folder into which all comments are being placed - 5 comment documents have been received so far, from the following submitters:

• Gunter Stuhec
• Mike Adcock
• SGML

• The review period closes 13/5/02. At that point, the Editorial Team will begin consolidating comments into a topic-based list.

• Tim will speak to Lisa about sending acknowledgements to submitters [ACTION ITEM].

• The Editorial Team has not yet met. Tim will organize a conference call for the Team on Thursday, 2/5/02, 7:00 AM California time. Tim to speak to Polly or Jon Bosak [ACTION ITEM].

• Peter Yim presented to the subcommittee the work plan for the Editorial Team (i.e. the process that they are planning to use in processing the comments). This process description was well received by the subcommittee.

• Tim asked the Editorial Team to come up with a schedule for both pre- and post- May 13th [ACTION ITEM]. Since a reasonable amount of time is necessary prior to 3/6/02 to get all documents to all teams for their review, the final deliverable of this material is probably the week prior to 3/6/02.

• Sue suggested that it might be helpful for the Editorial Team to advertise when they require additional resources - perhaps someone may have a free slot in their schedule and can help out. Tim asked Peter to put requests for resources out to the listserv as necessary.

• Enriching the metamodel - Dependencies, global attributes, uids, presentation attributes

• The subcommittee revisited the global attributes issue. Tim stated that there are 3 main questions:

• Does our metamodel accommodate global attributes?

• Do we intend to address the idea of presentation of markup as an attribute? (e.g. specify font size for a particular BIE)

• Elements vs. attributes (Gunter’s position paper)

• Regarding the first question: Tim stated that our metamodel currently does not accommodate global attributes, because we don’t have a concept of a finite model - rather, we have a set of reusable structures. We could accommodate them at an aggregate level, although we currently do not.

• Regarding the second question: Tim and the subcommittee believe that this is a non-critical-path issue, and therefore it has been shelved for the time being. Also, we are not sure that we really need to address this at all.

• Regarding the third question: Gunter’s position paper identified XML-specific attributes (e.g. xml:lang) that we might consider capturing. Tim asked Joe Chiusano to read section 6.2 of the paper and provide feedback to Tim [ACTION ITEM].

• Tim also commented on the logical model:

• He mentioned that the original UBL metamodel tried to retain as much syntax neutrality as possible; therefore, in theory the spreadsheet model that we are building does not have to be implemented in XML - it could be implemented in other syntaxes.

• We have all agreed that there is a need to capture this information but keep it separate from the logical (syntax-neutral) model. Therefore, we may need to add more columns to cover XML-specific attributes - but possibly not in the same spreadsheet as the logical model.

• Develop and document the UBL process/methodology

• Document is in process. Tim plans to complete it by next week [ACTION ITEM].

• Extending the model - SCM next documents (PO Response)

• Tim stated that this analysis needs to be kicked off. He asked for a subteam to be formed that can focus on this. Perhaps the subteam can use the Thursday morning call slot.

• Primary input will be the xCBL PR document. Tim asked others to provide input - we can entertain ideas from other vocabularies as well.

• Tim asked subcommittee members who are interested in participating in this subteam to send him an e-mail [ACTION ITEM].

• CCTS comments
  

• Deadline for comments to eBTWG is 4/5/02.

• Joe Chiusano stated that his comments would be submitted by his CC Review Subcommittee of the OASIS/ebXML Registry TC. Sue asked Joe for his assessment of the spec - Joe mentioned some examples of the feedback that the CC Review Subcommittee was planning to provide.

• Arofan net yet on call when this was discussed.

• Naming and design rules sc (anyone)

• No report.

• Context drivers sc (Sue)
  

• Context assembly sc (Arofan)
  

• Lisa not able to make call. Tim assumes that the eBTWG will be reviewing feedback in Barcelona; we will be fairly represented there.

• Core Component Supplemental Documents (Sally)

• Sally reported that the CCSD subcommittee is currently concentrating on the ATA (Air Transport Association) PO, which is part of the Boeing model (PO for spare parts procurement). To date, they have completed 1/3 of 34 data elements, (at the 4/29 conference call), two additional data elements were worked on. CCSD also discussed the "code vs. identifier" issue.

• In Barcelona, they plan to spend more time with the BP teams to learn more about what they are doing. They will also continue working on the ATA PO, and plan to complete it there.

• The ATA is moving toward XML transactions (from EDI), but not all of their messages are in XML yet. The CCDS subcommittee is currently working with the EDI version of the ATA PO.

• The CCDS subcommittee is taking sort of a "top-down-and-bottom-up" approach, in that they have documents and are using them as the basis for the top-down modeling. Tim expressed that this was a sensible approach.

• The next CCDS subcommittee conference call is on 13/5/02.

• Sally offered to send the ATA spreadsheet to the UBL team - Tim approved this as part of the "other input" category for our reviews. Sally will post spreadsheet to listserv [ACTION ITEM].

• Ontology sub-group (Peter)

• Peter reported that Leo Obrst is working on MITRE sponsoring his attendance at the upcoming F2F in Minneapolis. Peter is considering having Leo give a tutorial to the plenary and then visiting individual subcommittees. If there is enough interest after this, perhaps an ontology subgroup could be formed.

• Tim mentioned that the Context Methodology group should definitely be involved. Tim also mentioned that this should definitely be on the F2F agenda, and if Leo cannot attend a substitute should be sent from the W3C Web Ontology Working Group.

• We will see how this plays out in the next week or so. Tim asked Peter to bring this up again next week, to see if there is any movement.

• Liaison (Tim/Sue/Ray)
  

• ACORD
• ARTS (IX Retail)
• CIDX

• Tim stated that some of the groups found it difficult to fathom the material they were being asked to review. This may be because they were not close to the UBL efforts, and thus did not have a sense of the big picture.

• Tim will have a conference call with ARTS to give them an overview of UBL. CIDX will have an upcoming conference in San Jose - Arofan has volunteered to represent UBL at that conference.

• Tim stated that these two groups are unlikely to submit feedback by 13/5/02, so we may have to be a bit lenient on our deadline so that we can receive their feedback.

• xCRL and ACORD felt that the way we presented that package was not conducive to them, because a PO is not applicable to them. Tim commented that they should focus on the parts that are applicable to them, the structures created, etc.

• Arofan mentioned that a sample document may help them.

• Tim believes that we may still receive feedback from these two groups.

• Tim mentioned that there is a broader issue here: How do we encourage liaison from horizontal initiatives (such as CIDX)?

• CIDX already has an established vocabulary; therefore, what is the value proposition to CIDX from UBL?

• Jon Bosak is working this very issue.

• Arofan commented that perhaps they can offer us something - that is, they can help us develop the vertical industry transactions for their specific industry.

• Tim revisited the issue of attendance, specifically how we can increase participation on calls.

• The subcommittee discussed this, and decided that another time change may help. Therefore, the next call (and subsequent calls) will begin at 8:00 AM California time. This time will be locked in until the next F2F, where it will be discussed further.

• The next meeting will be Tuesday, 7/5/02, 8:00-10:00 AM California time.