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Re: Is an XML vocabulary a Domain Specific Language (DSL)?
- From: Stephen D Green <stephengreenubl@gmail.com>
- To: "W. Hugh Chatfield" <csi2000@urbanmarket.com>
- Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 08:01:07 +0100
Well it's a matter covered by laws and laws sometimes differ or are interpreted differently by different people so I'd better not try and elaborate too much. In the UK when I was working on e-procurement systems and had
to hear about legal aspects of trading using electronic documents, it was emphasised that the laws about orders, invoices and 'invitation to treat', etc, address the *legal entities* on each side of the transaction and it is of course
these legal entities which have the responsibilities - they cannot hide behind the fact they might use a computer to process their documents. Legal documents are, of course, addressed to people, not computers, since it
is people who are bound by the laws. If we saw the computer system as executing the order or invoice we'd get in a mess with the laws. A computer system cannot, from what I've been told, say, offer a product at a certain
price; it is the person 'behind it' who makes that offer - as when a programming error leads to terribly underspriced offer being made - you can't hide behind 'computer error'.
---- Stephen D Green
On 12 September 2012 19:53, W. Hugh Chatfield <csi2000@urbanmarket.com> wrote:
I'd say it depends if it is
(directly or indirectly) executed (by a
computer). UBL - not usually (to have a business
order or invoice document being 'executed' by a computer would be unusual,
and alarming to auditors for one thing, perhaps with a few exceptions such as
internal trading orders between departments in the same organisation, and it
wasn't really designed for that
example)
---- Stephen D
Green On 12 September 2012 11:59,
Costello, Roger L. <http://mailto:costello@mitre.org> wrote:
Hi
Folks,
...
Are there some XML vocabularies that would be
considered DSL's and other XML vocabularies that would not be considered
DSL's?
...
Is UBL a
DSL?
...
/Roger
I
am curious why one would say that UBL is not a domain specific language - or why
we wouldn't consider an "invoice" document as being "executed" by a computer.
I suppose a UBL transaction is not in the same league as a
specific computer language instruction - but an "invoice" does trigger a
specific set of actions within those classes of programs that understand what an
"invoice" is (and I think in a similar sense as saying a "do-while" statement
triggers a specific set of actions within those classes of programs that
understand what this "do-while" means within this specific programming
language).
I think most accounting application programs
have always expected data from invoices in electronic form as input - even if
you had to key it in manually, convert from paper via scan and OCR, or receive
it directly in electronic form, so I see no particular auditing issue as long as
we have a way of according an electronic-only version of an invoice the same
validity/authority as a paper invoice. UBL's domain is the domain of all
standard business documents that get exchanged between organizations (but not
the actions that are executed in the receiving programs) and provides a global,
royalty free, standard way of encoding that information. So I suppose
you could argue that UBL by itself, only describes the content of packets of
information being exchanged, and does not, by its very definition, cause any
actions unless acted upon by programs that are not part of UBL - but only
understand what a UBL document is, and the underlying accounting concept of
"invoice" and how to process it.
However, if you consider UBL
based applications (say Tradeshift's cloud-based social business network ),
a UBL transaction can trigger actions in the Tradeshift network, even before it
hits the intended receiver/processor of the transaction. For example, the
sender (supplier) might have opted for instant payment so they don't have to
wait for the normal 30/60/90 day payment periods from the customer. So in
this sense I think a UBL transaction can get "executed"....i.e. cause a specific
set of pre-defined actions to occur, somewhat separate from the invoice
processing by the customer itself. (even so, I see where we could argue
that the UBL transaction by itself only assumes a specific action by a receiving
program, and does not per se define it. Then again couldn't we say the
same thing about a "do-while").
Am I missing something here?
If so, I will blame old age.
;-)
Cheers....Hugh
CyberSpace
Industries 2000 Inc.
XML Training and Consulting
Documentary/Multimedia Productions
http://cyberspace-industries-2000.com
UBL is in your future: http://goUBL.com
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