ISO / TC 37 / SC 2 / WG 1 N 83
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 32
Data Management and Interchange
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC32 N 147
DATE: 1998-08-05
REPLACES
DOC TYPE:
National Body Contribution
TITLE:
Horizontal Issues and Encodable Value Domains in Electronic Commerce:
Non-technical Summary and Real World Examples to supplement BT-EC
Report
SOURCE:
Canadian National Body
PROJECT:
STATUS:
This document was reviewed at the SC 32 Plenary meetings, July 1998,
Brisbane, Australia.
ACTION ID: FYI
DUE DATE:
DISTRIBUTION: P & L Members
SC Chair
WG Conveners and Secretaries
MEDIUM:
DISKETTE NO.:
NO. OF PAGES: 20
Secretariat, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 32,
American National Standards Institute, 11 West 42nd Street, New York,
NY 10036; Telephone: 212-642-4976; Fax: 212-840-2298;
E-mail: mtopping@ansi.org
Title: Horizontal
Issues and Encodable Value Domains in Electronic Commerce: Non-technical
Summary and Real World Examples to supplement BT-EC Report
Source: CAC/JTC1/SC32,
Canada
Status: National Body Contribution
Action: FYI and Discussion at the SC32 HOD/C and Plenary in
Brisbane, July 98
Purpose: This document:
1.
is circulated to JTC1/SC32 as a reference document prepared
to facilitate follow-up to the BT-EC Report (JTC1 N5296) by SC32/WG2 (and
SC30/WG1) as stated in Resolution 8 of the 12th Plenary of JTC1 (N5448) and the
JTC1 Request for National Body and Subcommittee Comments on JTC1 N5296,
Electronic Commerce Business Team Report (N5437)
2.
serves as input to "Elaboration on the definition of
cultural and linguistic adaptability" for the JTC1 Ad-Hoc Meeting of the
new Technical Direction on
"Cultural and Linguistic Adaptability and User Interfaces" as per
Resolution 22 of the 12th JTC1 Plenary (N5448); and,
3.
contributes to the work of JTC1/SC32/WG2 on ISO/IEC PDTR
15452 "Information Technology - Specification of data value domains".
Contents:
1. INTRODUCTORY NOTES.........................................................................................
2. HORIZONTAL ISSUES...............................................................................................
2.1 Overview................................................................................................................................................................
2.2 Information Technology (IT) -enablement.......................................................................................................
2.3 Localization and multilingualism.....................................................................................................................
2.4 Cross-Sectorial issues.......................................................................................................................................
2.5 Cultural adaptability...........................................................................................................................................
3. REAL WORLD EXAMPLES OF ENCODED VALUE DOMAINS.....................
3.1 Introduction........................................................................................................................................................
3.2 Example #1 - Currency Codes.........................................................................................................................
3.3 Example #2 - Country Codes And Localization With Multilingualism...................................................
3.4 Example #3 - Language Codes And Concordance Among International Standards.............................
3.5 Commodity Codes: IT-Enabled With Localization And Multilingualism................................................
1. JTC1 activities of its Business Team on
Electronic Commerce (BT-EC) and the Cultural Adaptability Workshop (CAW) both
completed their work and reported to the 12th Plenary Meeting of
ISO/IEC JTC1, 2-5 June, 1998 in Sendai, Japan.
JTC1 document N5448 contains the resolution of this Plenary. Resolutions 8, 9 and 10 pertain to JTC1
follow-up on the BT-EC Report and recommendations. Resolution 22 pertains to JTC1 follow-up on CAW and its
recommendations.
Members of the BT-EC participated in
CAW. The BT-EC scheduled its final
meeting to be held after the Workshop on Cultural Adaptability so that the
BT-EC could benefit from the results of CAW.
In Resolution 8 (N5448), JTC1
instructs its secretariat to circulate the BT-EC Report to "National
Bodies" and all JTC1 Technical Directions for review and comment.
2. The purpose of this document is to
serve as a "non-technical" summary of work of the ISO/IEC JTC1
Business Team on Electronic Commerce (BT-EC) with respect to "Horizontal
Aspects" and "Encodable Value Domains". {See further below}. The
BT-EC Report (N5296) contains many recommendations pertaining to
"encodable value domains".
Here this document serves as a backgrounder.
3. This document consolidates in one
contribution contents from two existing JTC1 documents; namely:
(1) in
Chapter 2, the text found in Clause 6.0 of the BT-EC "Report to JTC1: Work
on Electronic Commerce Standardization to be initiated" (JTC1 N5296; and,
(2) in
Chapter 3, which is based on text found in a Canadian member body contribution
titled "Additional information in support of the BT-EC Report (JTC1 N5296)
- Examples of Encodable Value Domains with IT-Interface Needs, Localization and
Multilingualism" (JTC1 N5394).
4. While directed at JTC1/SC32/WG2 (and
WG1) and the JTC1 "Ad-Hoc on Cultural and Linguistic
Adaptability". This contribution
is also intended to be circulated outside of JTC1 to raise awareness and obtain
feedback on the topics covered here.
5. Horizontal Issues - Capsule Overview
In the BT-EC Report, cultural and
linguistic adaptability were deemed to be important to electronic
commerce. In addition to being noted as
part of consumer requirements {Section 5.2}, they were identified by the BT-EC
as key components of four horizontal issues which are of general relevance for
all scenarios involving Electronic Commerce.
These issues are:
Ĝ information
technology (IT)-enablement;
Ĝ localization
including multilingualism;
Ĝ cross-sectorial
aspects; and,
Ĝ cultural
adaptability.
The BT-EC ordered these horizontal
issues on the basis of:
(1) the need to go from
the simpler to more complex challenges;
(2) placing priority on
the "do-able" and immediately
most useful in the context of increasing resource constraints in
standardization work; and,
(3) promotion and
visibility of ISO/IEC JTC1 work within the ISO, IEC and ITU and especially
outside of these standardization communities.
From a user perspective, these four
horizontal issues need to be addressed in a harmonized manner.
From an Electronic Commerce
perspective, i.e., that of the JTC1/BT-EC perspective, standardization work
addressing the first three horizontal issues associated with:
Ĝ "IT-enablement";
Ĝ "Localization
and Multilingualism"; and,
Ĝ "Cross-Sectorial"
aspects,
should resolve many of the
requirements for cultural adaptability.
It then remains to be seen what other "cultural adaptability"
requirements remain, i.e., in addition to those already identified as "cultural
elements" and/or those of a societal nature.
BT-EC
identified four horizontal issues as being of general relevance for all
scenarios involving Electronic Commerce and gave these horizontal issues some
prominent attention in its work. These issues are:
· information
technology (IT)-enablement,
· localization
including multilingualism,
· cross-sectorial
aspects,
· cultural
adaptability.
These
horizontal issues are ordered here on the basis of
1. the
need to go from the simpler to more complex challenges,
2. placing
priority on the "do-able" and immediately most useful in the context
of increasing resource constraints in standardization work; and,
3 promotion
and visibility of ISO/IEC JTC1 work
within the ISO, IEC and ITU and especially outside of these standardization
communities.
From a user
perspective, these four horizontal issues need to be addressed in a harmonized
manner.
A key
characteristic of commerce world-wide, in particular in the
business-to-business and business-to-administration domains, is that it
consists of business transactions which:
1. are
rule-based, i.e., mutually understood and accepted sets of business conventions,
practices, procedures, etc.; and,
2. make
extensive use of "codes", often table-based, representing predefined
possible choices for common aspects of business transactions. Examples include
countries, currencies, languages, manufactures and their products.
Many of these
sets of agreed-upon rules used in business world-wide and their associated
lists of tables/codes are "de
jure" and "de facto"
standards. BT-EC noted that numerous international standards are already in
use in support of commerce world-wide. The problem is that most are paper-based
and lack a computer-processable version. Even if distributed in electronic
form, these standards including those of ISO, used in commerce world-wide
consist of tens of printed pages. They cannot be "plugged-in" for use
in Electronic Commerce. Much of the intelligence in these international
standards is humanly understandable explicitly or implicitly. They have not
been described formally using Formal Description Techniques (FDTs), i.e., in
their present form they do not support "computational integrity".
Consequently, each enterprise using these code sets has to spend
considerable time and effort to (1) determine their meaning and interpret them;
(2) build applications; and, (3) hope that they interoperate with other networks
or enterprises.
Human beings
like to name "objects". But the approach of using "names"
is not very IT friendly, cost-efficient or time-efficient.
Depending on
the interplay of multilingual and localization requirements, in Electronic Commerce,
a singular product or service being offered for sale will have multiple names
and differing names even in the "same" language. Thus, if we wish to
ensure rapid and widespread use of Electronic Commerce globally, we must on
the one hand identify "objects", i.e., products or services being
offered for sale, in an unambiguous, linguistically neutral, and IT-processable
and EC-facilitated manner, and, on the other hand, present the same via a range
of linguistic names (and associated character sets) from a point-of-sale
perspective, i.e., human-readable user interface, as required by the
"local" marketplace.
In order to
provide a focus for its work on horizontal issues, the BT-EC utilized four real
world examples; namely:
· Currency
Codes,
· Country
Codes,
· Language
Codes,
· Commodity
Codes.
(For details of
these examples see Chapter 3 below and JTC 1/BT-EC N 047).
These examples
represent standards used for commerce world-wide and are presently implemented
by enterprises and their information systems in wide variety of different ways.
There are also no "standard" ways for the interworking among these
and similar standards. This does not promote global interoperability. The
recent widespread use of the Internet is exacerbating existing ambiguities.
From a BT-EC
perspective, these four examples underline the fact that with respect to electronic
commerce there may be less of a need for new standards. Rather the immediate
challenge may well be the development of a category of information technology
standards which will facilitate the development of information technology
enabled versions of existing standards used in commerce and do so in a manner
which also supports the interplay of localization and multilingual requirements,
i.e., "bridging standards".
BT-EC wishes to
pass on the following considerations for such standardization work in support
of Electronic Commerce; namely:
1. Standards must focus on the interface (as opposed to implementation) as the best means of arriving at globally harmonized solutions for interoperability from both a b