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Subject: Input from Altova
Hello SBSC,
Here is the SBS 1.0 input from Alexander Falk at Altova.
Jon
=================================================================
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 21:34:44 -0400
From: Alexander Falk <al@altova.com>
Subject: RE: Reply from Altova...
To: jon.bosak@sun.com
Hi Jon:
I finally found the time to do some more work with UBL 1.0 and the UBL 1.0 SBS. Here are my comments and responses - in no particular order:
1. Adding UBL 1.0 schemas to XMLSpy's schema library:
As expected, adding the UBL 1.0 schemas to an XMLSpy installation was straightforward. I downloaded the UBL 1.0 ZIP file, copied the "xsd" subdirectory into the "schemas" subdirectory under the XMLSpy install dir, and changed the name from "xsd" to "UBL". Then I added the following lines to the "CustomCatalog.xml" file in the XMLSpy install dir:
<!--UBL Section-->
<uri name="urn:oasis:names:specification:ubl:schema:xsd:Order-1.0" uri="schemas/UBL/maindoc/UBL-Order-1.0.xsd"/>
<uri name="urn:oasis:names:specification:ubl:schema:xsd:OrderResponse-1.0" uri="schemas/UBL/maindoc/UBL-OrderResponse-1.0.xsd"/>
<uri name="urn:oasis:names:specification:ubl:schema:xsd:OrderResponseSimple-1.0" uri="schemas/UBL/maindoc/UBL-OrderResponseSimple-1.0.xsd"/>
<uri name="urn:oasis:names:specification:ubl:schema:xsd:OrderChange-1.0" uri="schemas/UBL/maindoc/UBL-OrderChange-1.0.xsd"/>
<uri name="urn:oasis:names:specification:ubl:schema:xsd:OrderCancellation-1.0" uri="schemas/UBL/maindoc/UBL-OrderCancellation-1.0.xsd"/>
<uri name="urn:oasis:names:specification:ubl:schema:xsd:DespatchAdvice-1.0" uri="schemas/UBL/maindoc/UBL-DespatchAdvice-1.0.xsd"/>
<uri name="urn:oasis:names:specification:ubl:schema:xsd:ReceiptAdvice-1.0" uri="schemas/UBL/maindoc/UBL-ReceiptAdvice-1.0.xsd"/>
<uri name="urn:oasis:names:specification:ubl:schema:xsd:Invoice-1.0" uri="schemas/UBL/maindoc/UBL-Invoice-1.0.xsd"/>
This file is an OASIS catalog file that can be edited by any user. After I had modified that file, I quit and restarted XMLSpy and from that moment on, opening any of the SBS example files (with or without URL) resulted in those files getting validated against my local copy of the UBL 1.0 schemas. I will discuss with our CTO if we can simply distribute these schemas with the next version of XMLSpy, so that users don't have to go through these steps, but get the schemas installed by default and also find these OASSIS catalog entires in the "MainCatalog.xml" file that ships with XMLSpy.
2. Working with the SBS filled examples in the "xml" directory
After making the above changes to the catalog file, opening any of the SBS filled example files (with or without URI) resulted in XMLSpy successfully showing the respective editing entry helpers and validating those files against the corresponding schemas, so that working with those files was immediately possible without any errors or inconveniences. Including these examples with XMLSpy is, therefore, also a possibility that I will discuss with our CTO.
3. Working with the SBS filled examples in the "xml-generated" directory
All these examples could be validated as well. However, they provide little value in illustrating to the business user what an example document might look like. They are certainly of interest to developers, but I am not sure, if I would want to include those in the Examples that we ship with XMLSpy, since they might be more confusing than helping to further the spread of UBL.
4. Working with the SBS empty templates in the "xml-generated" directory
This is the area, where - as I had already indicated in our conversation last week - I would suggest some changes to the SBS committee, if I may. When shipping empty template documents with a software product, the goal is to make these usable in such a way that a user can create a valid document with the least amount of effort. It does, therefore, greatly help if the template document itself is a valid XML document. Unfortunately, none of the empty templates are presently valid. This is due to the fact that all XML elements and attributes in these templates have an empty value - even those where the XML schema clearly forbids that. I would, therefore, suggest that a better approach would be to only leave those elements and attributes empty where such empty values are indeed permitted by the XML schema, and to choose reasonable default values for those other elements or attributes, where an empty value is forbidden by the schema. If those default values are picked reasonably (such as 0 for any quantity, 0.00 for any amount, the date 1900-01-01 for any date, USD for any currency) so that they can immediately be identified as placeholders, I believe the user is better served, because they get presented with a document template that they can start to fill in, instead of an error message from the XML parser that the template is not valid.
I am attaching a modified form of "Order.xml" that shows the few changes that I would recommend, and this pattern can easily be applied to the other empty templates as well.
I hope that this feedback is useful. Please let me know if I can help in any other way.
Best regards,
Alexander
... Alexander Falk
... President & CEO
... Altova, Inc.
... Member of the W3C Advisory Committee
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