4.15.1 Modeling Tax, Customs, Legal, and Other Cross-Border and Cultural Considerations

One comment, we have a section 4.15, with no intro paragraph and one subsection 
4.15.1.  We should either consolidate it all under 4.15, or come up with at 
least one more subsection and an intro paragraph.

I broke out Scenario A with a simplification, then a what if, to show the 
complexities of cross-border services.  I felt like it was important to point 
out just how complex such a service is when serving multiple countries.

I made some minor edits to Scenarios B and C.

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4.15.1 Modeling Tax, Customs, Legal, and Other Cross-Border and Cultural 
Considerations

{leave first 2 paragraphs as is, or not}

Scenario A:  Web service A, specific to a country C, takes in the value of a 
sale, a language parameter, and the names of the city and the province.  The 
currency is limited to country C's official currency.  Service A then calls a 
set of services, translating names into identifiers.  Service B takes in a city 
id and a monetary value, then calculates city sales tax based on current tax 
tables it retrieves from other services; it returns the tax amount as a numeric 
value.  Service C performs a similar function for taxes at the provincial level. 
    Service A then takes those monetary values and returns them with identifying 
tags for the city and provincial tax.

If Service A were to be used for multiple countries, there would have to be 
additional parameters, for example:

	o a country identifier
	o other regional identifiers, such as county and state
	o a currency identifier

There would have to be a function to handle currency calculations, possibly in a 
separate service.  The additional tax regions need to be managed, again by 
separate services.

Scenario B:  An application uses a Web service to send DVDs to rental customers 
around the world. DVDs contain a region code that limits where they can be 
played (according to the country they are intended for.) The Web service takes 
the country ID of of the customer and selects the right region code DVD to send.

Scenario C:  Web service M takes a country ID, looks it up in a database, and
returns the driving rules for that country.
---------------------------------------------

I'm not sure what other subsections would fit into this category.  I had a 
thought about a scenario of a service which took a product code and looked up 
whether it was legal to ship that type of product to the country identified as 
the destination.  But it seemed a bit complex to have as a service.

Anyone else have an idea what might be included in this section?

Andrea
-- 
I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. 
My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.
-Bjarne Stroustrup, designer of C++ programming language (1950- )

Received on Tuesday, 13 April 2004 18:02:41 UTC