----- Original Message ----- From: "Stephen Green" <step...@gmail.com> To: "Yukinori Saito" <sait...@fujielectric.co.jp> Cc: <step...@gmail.com>; "Monica J. Martin" <Moni...@sun.com>; "Noboru Itoh" <nit...@attglobal.net>; <kue...@iea.att.ne.jp>; <nai...@is.oit.ac.jp>; "Dale Moberg" <dmob...@cyclonecommerce.com>; "UBL JPLSC" <ubl-...@lists.oasis-open.org> Sent: Thursday, July 06, 2006 8:37 PM Subject: Re: Comments to UBL SBS and UBP by JPLSC

Saito-San

Many thanks for such detailed comments. These are of great interest with regard to SBSC development. Of course, I hope you will consider whether to submit these to UBL formally. At present I take it that these are submitted for my perusal only until I hear otherwise from you.

I will try to answer some of the questions (not official answers, just my own):

Questions Scope of SBS adoption Who are users of SBS?

I believe they will be software developers and project managers developing e-solutions for small businesses who trade with other small businesses and with larger businesses

Which described below is a suitable scope regarding SBS adoption?

SBS will be used by a small business which is conducted by within SMEs (Small and Medium sized enterprises) only. SBS will be used by a small business which is conducted by not only within SMEs (Small and Medium sized enterprises), but also between large enterprises and SMEs.

Both of these are considered and the SBS package seeks to provide for both but the main consideration is not the larger but the smaller business who need to keep the costs of development to a minimum and may not be already using elaborate and expensive (to maintain) EDI solutions. Primarily the consideration is to cater for those who are moving to UBL not from EDI but from paper-based systems (paper invoices and orders input manually into low-end and bespoke business applications).

Methodologies to develop SBS from UBL SBS is a subset of fullset UBL.

What is a methodology or algorism to develop SBS from UBL?

Is the methodology or algorism (to have developed SBS) based on some research or investigation?

Yes, there has been much research in the area of conversion of paper-based procurement systems (invoice and order based) to electronic equivalents. Some of the work on which the SBS was based was done by PriceWaterhouse Coopers for the EU Commission and also considered was the similar study by APEC. Particular consideration was given to feedback in UBL from members (such as yourself) and liaisons such as PWC and from early adopters of UBL and Government Offices standardising on UBL. All these gave the same message, that small businesses needed the identification of a core subset and special treatment to ensure that the subset could be used by as many as possible and with as little difficulty as possible.

Remarks: Methodologies to develop Manufacturing SMS business document in ECOM, Japan.

ECOM has researched the current operational business documents (Order) using by some big enterprises in Japan. The number of the big enterprises is 17 companies. By evaluating and summarizing these business documents, ECOM has developed Manufacturing SME business document. Therefore, the scope to use this Manufacturing SME business document is e-businesses not only within SMEs, but also between big enterprises and SMEs.

Yes, this is an important comment and it may be that the next thing to address within UBL is the need to provide for larger businesses too who still cannot be expected to cater in their software for all of UBL. That was out of scope for the SBSC except that we sought to provide some of the first attempt mechanisms for defining subsets which might be resued for suchuse cases too.

Regarding the observation of no diagrams in the UBP, I personally didn't see the need for these as the processes were in most cases just a single message (deliberately so, to allow virtually everyone to use these same processes and if they needed to ellaborate then they could do so be combining the atomic processes and adding choreography, etc in the Collaborations, etc).

I personally regard the BPSS 2.0.3 as a key way to identify the party's desire to limit trade to the subset so that they can be sure to receive only messages which take the their limits of catering for just the subset into account. I suppose that this would apply not just to the SBS but to any use of subsets, unless a new namespace has been created to distinguish subset use (which I think is less than optimal for use of available software). Maybe in time there will be some recognition of these things by users of ebXML in general. I do wonder what is being used in the meantime and how the features compare with use of BPSS.

Thanks you very much Saito-san and JPLSC for these comments. I eagerly wait to see how these matters will develope with time.

All the best

On 06/07/06, Yukinori Saito <sait...@fujielectric.co.jp> wrote: