The Implementation Subcommittee will meet by phone on Thursday 4 December 2003, 23:00 UTC. http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?day=4&month=12&year=2003&hour=23&min=0&sec=0&p1=0 ############################################# STANDING INFORMATION FOR UBL CONFERENCE CALLS U.S. domestic toll-free number: (866)839-8145 Int. access/caller paid number: (865)524-6352 Access code: 5705229 ############################################# Agenda ------ 1. Welcome, roll, minutes 2. Admin: name change, new members, mail alias, web page 3. Charter review 5. Action items review 6. Next steps - define outputs/process 7. Implementations review (continue from last meeting) 8. Other business 1. Welcome, roll, minutes Attending: Bill French, Stephen Green, Anne Hendry, Lars Oppermann. Current membership: Voting members: Bill French william.french@earthlink.net Stephen Green stephen_green@bristol-city.gov.uk Anne Hendry anne.hendry@sun.com Ken Holman gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com Amit Sheth amitkumar.sheth@sun.com Stephen Parker sparker@impaq.co.uk [Steve Griffiths sgriffiths@impaq.co.uk] Lars Oppermann lars.opperman@sun.com Non-voting members / Observers: Chee-Kai Chin cheekai@softml.net Dean Burson dean@traxian.com Keith Lee keith.lee@sun.com Bill Meadows bill.meadows@sun.com Shin Takagi s-takagi@hitachi-system.co.jp In process: Stephen Kirkham stephen.kirkham@sun.com We have quorum for today's meeting. 2. Admin: name change, new members, mail alias, web page SC Name Change: The SC name is now Impelentation SC - the word 'Pilot' has been dropped. It was to be 'Implementors' rather than 'Implementation', but this change somehow didn't make it. Anne will follow up. Email lists: Our new mail list is: ubl-isc@lists.oasis-open.org. The new ubl-dev@lists.oasis-open.org will go live on December 15th. It is being announced at XML 2003 and other venues by OASIS and UBL members. Web page: Our web page is up but we don't have a link to it from the UBL TC page. Anne will follow up. 3. Charter review (see charter sent by Bill) UBL ISC Charter Items: 1. To track progress on existing UBL implementations Agreed. This would entail more than just a description. In some cases people implementing would be in the ISC and providing status on a regular basis. For other implementors that are not part of the ISC, proress tracking would be deinfed more broadly (eg. in developemnt, production, etc). Bill noted that tracking means presenting as much info as you can - with broad brush on one hand (in development, in production, etc.) and otherwise to to the extent we can list the details. Lars suggested that at some point we conduct a survey to determine what people are doing with the product - a form-based query perhaps. Bill responded that we may want to go deeper on some, but could do regular report. For this we will need a regular web page area. Anne will look into getting our web page set up. 2. Provide future release feedback requirements to other UBL SC's and to end users Agreed. Anne noted that we may want to generalize our communciation process to other SCs, since we have several SCs we need to communicate with. We will also be brokering discussions between implemetors and other SCs. For this we can use a front-line desk scenario; ISC is the first point of contact and LCSC could handle backline/technical responses. 3. To recruit new implementers Agreed. 4. Act as the UBL "User Group" Agreed. Provide information on the Use, pitfalls, etc. Use this to gather user requirements (users can be developers). 5. Provide case studies, ROI, and other product marketing materials to the end user community. Agreed. Producing a FAQ document for includison in the umbrella FAQ. We'll need to talk to LCSC on formatting, etc. Stephen noted that it is time to look at increasing the UBL library to incorporate other standards work. That UBL was intended to grow. Bill agreed that acting as the UBL Users Group and including standards groups as users, will help us evolve UBL. Evangelizing is part of this. We need to discuss how to evangelize UBL in the context of this SC. Similar to embassadors, but in both directions. What's not in the UBL ISC Charter: 1. Be the bug reporting group for UBL Agreed. Bill Meadows owns handling bugs in the libary through the LCSC, since LCSC usually is the SC that fixes the problem. This may be different now that there are multiple SCs. 2. Be the catch-all for items that don't fit into other SC's Agreed. It was also agreed that the ISC target audiences are: - end users - product companies - solution providers (software support, SIs, etc) - developers - standards organizations Types of implementations we would like to encourage: - high impact on adoption by end users of UBL - high impact on standards bodies (promotion of using UBL, on convergence) - doesn't produce an encumbered implementation - reaches broad set of users 5. Action items review 20031120-01: Bill F. write draft charter and send to team. Done. 20031120-02: Anne/Bill F. change name of subcommittee to 'Pilot Implementors SC' In progress. 20031120-03: Anne follow up on creation/purpose/use of ubl-dev list Done. 20031120-04: Bill M. / Amit contact IMPAQ representatives to encourage to join PISC Done. 6. Next steps - define outputs/process - descriptions of implementations Stephen elaborated on the process he went through for his implementation. He used Altova 'Authentic'. One caveat to using this product is that it requires a proprietary stylesheet. Benefits are that it creates and edits XML files in a GUI so there's no need to see the XML markup. 'Authentic' uses Altova's 'SPS' format to import files into 'Authentic'. Drawbacks are that you can only email the XML, so it's not as easy as proper workflow, and that he couldn't just create the pdf from the version he had - that would have required a more expensive version. But it did allow for the generation of html, which was then saved as pdf. It would be better if Altova added UBL stylesheet support to their product. They already support Docbook and other stylesheets. There is a drop-down menu that allows you to select from a variety of business documents and UBL would fit well there. Lars commented that OO version 1.1 is just starting out to look at how UBL fits in and how it can be integrated with their workflow features. This will be part of XForms integration since OO already has XSLT support. OO would do a better job of generation of pdf files, although tables can be complex at times. However, the bigger benefit with OO is that you have the spreadsheet and can easily get from there to invoice or order templates, or visa versa, then have a full finance package. So ultimately with ubl you should be able to bind cells in your spreadsheet model to actual fields in the instances of a UBL document; the spreadsheet only represents one view of and instance. It would be a logical next step to enable a wizard to do this for you. Since it may not be feasible for most small business users to invest a lot in tools, they would use a spreadsheet to produce an invoce. Think of how many shops there are that might want to use electronic ecommerce this way. Any solution in this space needs to be flexible enough to let people use their imagination. Lars asked if this is already important with a small shops? Stephen replied that, yes, small shops already processing orders, always sending orders and ideally they want to tie this in to their spreadsheet. Several others chimed in that they know of people in their daily lives - small business owners - that would love this capability if it could be make simple and inexpensive. Products such as QUicken/QuickBooks may support genration of invoices but require a database technology behind the scenes, not a spreadsheet, and is done typically using email: prodcue a document and allow someone to send it via email. There will be hundreds of products supporting automation at this level once UBL is ubiquitous. - list of stylesheet implementors (get from Ken) - case studies - document outlining some common pitfalls with solutions We need to create a document that helps people with their implementations Eg. common problems to be addressed, pitfalls, best practices. Examples of issues were uncovered during Stephen's implementation: - too many mandatory entities - must be able to leave things blank, but breaks ndr rules - can't use address lines with structured address very well These are the types of things that should go into this type of document, but these should also go back to LCSC. We need to agree what can be put in our document. AI: Bill/Anne negotiate some process w/ lcsc on input from implementors. 7. Implementations review (continue from last meeting) Open Office: Product management has been debating where this support should go, so this didn't ge announced last week, but this resolved and announced today, so Lars will post the announcement to our list next week. Stephen's Invoice scenario: A description of this implementation was sent to the ubl list and further described above. This is a good example of how a small business can start automating their process. This should be further highlighted. Bill and Stephen will re-draft the description into a more formal paper for availability on our web site. 8. Other business ubl-comment: There were some comments by J Sanz sent to the ubl-comment list. Jon has addressed one asking about a list of government agencies or other public agencies implementing UBL. For now we have no such list, but we should begin creating this with the information we have to date. We shoul probably discuss the format, but for now it can have links. Lars or Stephen volunteered for this. Meeting time: This time is late for Europe and doesn't seem to be good for Chee-Kai or Tim either. We agreed to change the meeting time for next week at least to 11:30 on Thursday (11 December). Agenda items for next week: - determine what we actualy report, frequency,e tc. in these charter items. - how can we evangelize UBL in this SC to increase adoption and embracing of other standards Action Items ------------ 20031204-01: Anne - get name update from 'Implementation' to 'Implementors'. 20031204-02: Anne - get link set up from UBL TC home page to ISC page. 20031204-03: Bill/Stephen work get Stephen's work more fully documented. 20031204-04: Lars send latest OO plans. 20031204-05: Anne look into getting our web page set up. 20031204-06: Bill French draft final charter based on today's feedback. 20031204-07: Bill/Anne negotiate process w/ LCSC on documenting feedback from implementors. 20031204-08: Anne look into FAQ format. 20021204-09: Stephen/Lars(?) begin implementors page.