RE: Revised: Mission Statement

Tony,

I agree with you generally that contracts will be between two
parties, but such contracts may also define obligations that
affect relationships (e.g., contracts) with entities not party
to the contract.  Thus a seller may require that a buyer have
an established line of credit with a financial institution
and this might be confirmed by an exchange with the designated
institution.

There will also be exchanges where there is no contract to
start with and the exchange will develop an agreement, i.e.,
contract.  Exchanges may also be governed by commercial standards
or laws to which parties of an exchange subscribe or are
subject to.

The more difficult choreographies may be where there is no
contract and parties want to establish a relationship in which
the risk to each is minimized, e.g., I don't ship anything until
I'm sure I know who your are and am assured that I will get paid.

Fred

Fred

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Fletcher, Tony [mailto:Tony.Fletcher@choreology.com]
> Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2003 6:57 AM
> To: Andrew Berry; public-ws-chor@w3.org
> Subject: RE: Revised: Mission Statement
> 
> 
> 
> Dear Andrew,
> 
> Below you write:  "Is a choreography an electronic representation of a
> business contract for the interaction?   If so, then perhaps model
> visibility/scope should be defined by the contract boundaries."
> 
> Thank you for raising this topic.  I do think that contracts are going
> to be an important 'overlay' to this work.  Sometimes they will be
> explicit and quite tight (this is usually true in the B2B 
> eBusiness case
> I suspect) or covered by an implicit 'default' contract / legal
> framework - as in some uses of Web Services.  So the range 
> and nature of
> the contract could be quite wide depending on the precise situation.
> 
> I also wonder if your last sentence needs some expansion.  My
> understanding is that specific contracts are usually between just 2
> interacting roles (/ parties).  Thus a choreography involving just 2
> roles will conform to our sentence.  However, a choreography that
> encompasses several roles and parties will involve several different
> contractual relationships - one for each pair wise interaction in the
> Choreography.  (I am sure you are aware of this, and I realise the
> difficulty of succinctly expressing something without reproducing the
> whole thesis! - just pointing out for others to agree / disagree.)
> 
> Note 1:  My understanding of a party is a single administrative domain
> such as a company or some trading entity of a company.   A role is a
> party acting in a specific capacity - e.g. supplier, buyer, 
> distributor,
> stock controller, etc.
> 
> Note 2:  You will need to check my understanding against what 
> others in
> the group say.  I can not claim to be expressing the group consensus
> (though I am honestly trying not to mislead but contribute to forward
> motion!).
> 
> Best Regards     Tony
> A M Fletcher
>  
> Cohesions  (TM)
>  
> Business transaction management software for application coordination
> www.choreology.com
>  
> Choreology Ltd., 13 Austin Friars, London EC2N 2JX     UK
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> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-ws-chor-request@w3.org
> [mailto:public-ws-chor-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Berry
> Sent: 16 July 2003 15:12
> To: public-ws-chor@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Revised: Mission Statement
> 
> 
> 
> >
> > Jon Dart wrote:
> >
> > > Several statements have been made about the kind of model we don't
> > want.
> > > But IMO it is not really clear enough what we do want.
> > >
> > > If I understand things correctly (a fairly big "if"), one
> > requirement is
> > > that there be basically one model for both client & 
> server (or peer
> > and
> > > its peer, if you want to be more egalitarian). This means that I
> > don't
> > > need to model the messages one party sends and have a 
> parallel model
> > of
> > > what the other party is receiving. The choreography description I
> > expose
> > > to my partners should be sufficient for them to interact with me.
> > This
> > > doesn't imply that there's one big model of all participants'
> > > message flows - in fact I think you don't want this. But it does 
> > > imply that
> > as
> > > party A directly interacting with party B, both parties 
> have a model
> > > they can both view and base their interactions on (could 
> include > 2
> 
> > > participants also).
> >
> 
> One of the issues that has come up for me in the past is that of 
> business contracts.  Business-to-business interaction tends to be 
> governed by legally-binding, written or unwritten contracts that 
> specify the required roles and behaviour of all participants.  Is a 
> choreography an electronic representation of a business contract for 
> the interaction?   If so, then perhaps model visibility/scope 
> should be 
> defined by the contract boundaries.
> 
> Ciao,
> 
> AndyB
>

Received on Thursday, 17 July 2003 13:51:45 UTC