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Review of Two Diffs (Michael/Sue's and Stephen's)

  • 1.  Review of Two Diffs (Michael/Sue's and Stephen's)

    Posted 06-28-2004 20:46
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    Subject: Review of Two Diffs (Michael/Sue's and Stephen's)


    Here is my assessment of the differences found using the 'diff' technique,
    and my resolution
    proposals/suggestions. There are ten in all.
    
    
    1.   Address. Street Name. Name    vs    Address. Street Name. Text
    This appears in both sets of diffs.
    
    Proposed amendment   -   change published spreadsheet to Address. Street
    Name. Name
    Reason    this will match Address. Additional_ Street Name. Name
    
    
    2.   Michael and Sue's spreadsheet picked up on
    Address. Additional_ Street Name. Name, etc   -   published spreadsheets
    have extra spaces after the underscore in the DEN's
    
    This is a known issue which has been pointed out many times before and
    appears to be due to a 'bug' in the formula generating the DENs in the
    published
    spreadsheets. In the past the DEN's in Schemas were not taken from the
    spreadsheet
    so this was just overlooked. Now the DEN's still are not taken from the
    spreadsheet
    so I overlooked it as before.  The effort to put this right might be out of
    proportion to the
    importance and the impact, if any, of leaving it. I propose to ignore it for
    now.
    
    
    3.   Michael and Sue's work picked up on the extra dot at the end of ASBIE
    DEN's
    e.g. Address. Address Line. in the published spreadsheets but not the
    Schemas (labelled 'rt' in their work)
    I ignored it as too minor to warrant discussion since, again, the DEN's are
    generated
    and not normative. It might be worth fixing the formula to correct this but
    experience
    from 'beta' with the formulas makes me think it might be more trouble than
    the impact
    warrants.
    
    
    4.   Both sets of diffs picked out the error in Allowance Charge. Reason.
    Code
    This has little significant impact. I suggest amending the spreadsheet
    because that
    avoids changing the Schemas but I accept that it could be argued that the
    Schemas
    could be changed because the change is to the documentation only. The 'tag'
    name
    is unaffected.
    
    
    5.   Michael and Sue's worked picked up on the dropping of 'Currency_' from
    the
    DEN of Allowance Charge. Currency. Currency_ Code in the published
    spreadsheets
    
    I don't know which is correct but I think this is particularly worth
    changing if the error is in
    the Schemas since they are normative. However, it would be worth changing
    the spreadsheets
    if it was clear which version was correct (from the CCTS). If it is unclear
    and the Schemas
    don't need to be changed then I'd change the spreadsheets to keep them
    consistent with the Schemas
    
    
    6.   My diff ommitted the differences in the DEN's for Allowance Charge.
    Amount since
    this difference only occurs in the DEN and not in the other column values.
    Michael and Sue's
    diff picked up on it. I would propose that since this requires a change to
    the formula which generates
    DEN's it is probably not worth fixing, except to add a note to the
    spreadsheets or package documentation
    to say that the spreadsheet DEN's should not be treated as normative or
    relied on. Perhaps the values from the Schemas
    should be those which are submitted to TBG17 if it is not too late. I do
    anticipate push-back on this but I'm
    bearing in mind with this and all such spreadsheet formula errors or
    inadequacies, that a spreadsheet formual has
    limited 'granularity' or precision when compared to a scripting or
    programming language for generating such strings.
    
    
    7.   Both diffs picked up on a high-impact difference. Exchange Rate.
    Operator. Code
    The impact of this is high because it has resulted in the loss of the
    Operator codelist from the CAC Schema.
    This needs a correction to the CAC Schema. EF has it just as Datatype 'Code.
    Type' but it should be
    'Operator_ Code. Type' which would bind it to the operator codelist.
    Backwards compatibility might be barely affected
    if the NDR rule is followed which requires new namespaces anyway. This
    correction would require that that be
    done anyway (as we are discussing on ubl-dev with regard to restrictions of
    'bound' codelists.) The impact of
    the new namespaces on backwards compatibilty is obvious but acceptable, I
    would think, in the move from cd
    to specification (I take it that is what we are doing at this stage - if not
    then we have another problem, we need a second
    'cd' namespace, probably.)
    
    
    8.    There are two obvious errors in the spreadsheets published, both
    similar, but both can be corrected in the spreadsheets
    without affecting anything else:  DocumentDocumentStatusCode   and
    IssueIssueDateDate, both in OrderReference.
    The reason my diff overlooked these was because I had chosen to ignore the
    DEN column which is one place the error
    is evident and, more pertinently, I had ignored the DataTypeQualifier column
    due to the fact that EF treats this completely differently
    to the published spreadsheets, which therefore masked the difference. (Sue
    and Michael hadn't filtered out the DEN differences
    and so highlighted this error.) . [Also, this was already listed elsewhere
    in our bug-list.]
    The Datatype Qualifiers in the published spreadsheets should be corrected.
    
    
    9.   Both diffs found the Schema error Payment Means. Payment Means. Code
    which is incorrectly named
    Payment Means. Payment_ Means Type. Payment Means_ Code in the Schemas which
    also have an incorrect
    'tag' name PaymentMeansTypeCode. This was changed to remove the name part
    'Type' during the drafting phase of
    1.0 but to change it now would produce a backwards incompatibility into 1.0.
    I threfore propose that the spreadsheet be changed
    to include the extra word 'Type'. A loose end will then be the name of the
    codelist. This is currently PaymentMeansCode but it
    cannot (as far as I can imagine) be changed so there will be a discrepancy
    which should probably be well documented. The
    documentation will need to be examined for any other mentioning of this
    element name to ensure it is kept consistent.
    (ubl-dev pointed out a discrepancy here.)  Chee-Kai pointed out that the
    list of values included the 'Type' word but
    this will now have stay like that, rather than being corrected as Chee-Kai
    suggested.
    
    Another discrepancy is in the distribution of terms between columns which
    should be corrected in the Schema documentation
    (with no impact on instances)
    
    
    10.   Both diffs found the error in the published Order Change document
    spreadsheet. The Schema is correct. The Amount
    for LineExtensionTotal should be of Datatype UBL_ Amount. Type rather than
    Amount. Type.  The published spreadsheets
    should be changed.
    
    
    
    
    With regard to my filtering out of spreadsheet DEN formula discrepancies, I
    think it is most important to
    find any errors which might impact on instances. This is not to say that
    DEN's etc are not important to
    get right, of course, for interoperability. I just think we are well aware
    of the limitations and almost to say
    crudeness of the spreadsheet DEN formula and would not really wish it to be
    relied on when Schemas
    can rather use a properly and more extensively programmed formula. Then
    there is consideration of there
    perhaps being some room for interpretation in the production of the DEN
    anyway.
    
    
    Stephen Green
    
    
    


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