RE: EDI and Use Cases

the 'To', 'From' - themselves could be URIs, the 'Control Number' in a
message could be a GUID? What, for eg., a message needs to refer to an
earlier message - a PurchaseOrder Response based on a Purchase Order - a
reference Control Number? How does one distinguish whether a message has
been sent multiple times - should the Control number (GUID) gets generated
(unique) each time?

Srinivas

-----Original Message-----
From: Cutler, Roger (RogerCutler) [mailto:RogerCutler@chevrontexaco.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2002 12:14 PM
To: 'Hugo Haas'; www-ws-arch@w3.org
Subject: RE: EDI and Use Cases


Does identifying messages with a URI satisfy the sequencing requirement?
Seems to me that it might not.  Also seems to me that using URI's does not
help with the queries noted below.

However, one might object that I am asking for intelligent keys, which in
some cirles is sort of a no-no.  So perhaps a URI is a reasonable unique ID
and the "To", "From" "Control Number" thing is at a lower level?  That is,
if one were talking relational databases the URI would be the key but
"To/From/ControlNumber" might have constraints of required and unique?  Does
this make sense in this context?

-----Original Message-----
From: Hugo Haas [mailto:hugo@w3.org] 
Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2002 1:52 PM
To: www-ws-arch@w3.org
Subject: Re: EDI and Use Cases


* Cutler, Roger (RogerCutler) <RogerCutler@chevrontexaco.com> [2002-04-02
13:46-0600] [..]
> I am, however, a bit concerned about two other issues that appear to 
> be important to EDI.  The first may be trivial, the second may be 
> impossible -- but they are both things that seem to be heavy hitters 
> in terms of what is expected from a VAN so let me get them on the 
> table for comment:
> 
> 1 - Unique message ID and sequencing.  It is very important to be able 
> to identify a message uniquely, and this identification is generally 
> contained in the enveloping mechanism.  (There are usually other ID's 
> in the body, but this is clearly beyond the scope of the 
> infrastructure).  The unique identification is commonly done by the 
> combination of "To", "From" and a sequential "control number".  This 
> facilitates queries like, "Did you get message N sent from A to B?"  
> "What messages of those sent from A to B are between N and M?" and so 
> on.  In addition, the datetime of message envelope creation (not 
> necessarily the datetime sent) is also important.  As in "What 
> messages were created on Tuesday by A?"  As I understand it, the 
> sequencing is logical, not a guarantee of order of delivery.  However, 
> in some cases (as I understand it, this is unusual) the sequencing may 
> be required.  That is, control number 21 is not a valid message unless 
> (or until?) 20 has been received.

Identifying messages is a good idea. On the Web, the natural way to do this
is to use URIs.

* Damodaran, Suresh <Suresh_Damodaran@stercomm.com> [2002-04-04 10:00-0600]
[..]
> ebXML Messaging  2.0 specification (the latest version under review) 
> requires a GUID (globally unique id) for all messages.
> 
> 3.1.6.1 MessageId Element
> The REQUIRED element MessageId is a globally unique identifier for 
> each message conforming to MessageId [RFC2822].

In ebXML Messaging  2.0, the message identifier is not expressed as a URI
AFAICT, but could be with the mid scheme[1].

Regards,

Hugo

  1. http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/uri/rfc2111.txt
-- 
Hugo Haas - W3C
mailto:hugo@w3.org - http://www.w3.org/People/Hugo/ - tel:+1-617-452-2092

Received on Thursday, 4 April 2002 18:40:09 UTC