XML.org Daily Newslink for Thursday, 09 March 2006 carried a reference for "How to Solve the Business Standards Dilemma: CCTS Key Model Concepts," by Gunther Stuhec (SAP Developer Network). Daily Newslink editor received multiple reports about difficulty accessing the article and/or its series companion, "The Context Driven Business Exchange," which was aliased to a shorter URI. Pending investigation of this situation, possibly the fault of the newsletter editor, please see:
[March 2006] "How to Solve the Business Standards Dilemma: CCTS Key Model Concepts." By Gunther Stuhec. Technical Paper from the SAP Developer Network. March 2006. Copyright (c) 2006 SAP AG. 18 pages.
"The CCTS approach is a paradigm shift in defining, describing, or representing business data to enable real application, platform, or B2B interoperability. CCTS conceptual model template constructs are the focal point in the definition of unambiguous business data models. These templates play a pivotal role in transforming context-neutral components into contextualized components. These templates provide a mechanism through building block derivation by restriction for flexibility in the required business contexts... This second article CCTS Key Model Concept describes the key aspects and representation of the data model as described in the ISO / UN/CEFACT Core Components Technical Specification 'CCTS'. It considers especially the template realm of data models and the derived context specific realm of a data model, which will represent the precise semantic meaning in a given business content. This kind of data model concept helps to enable a business data exchange with less bilateral arrangements beforehand. The focus of that business data models is on similar naming, structuring and assembling so that the involved business partners can interpret and use these business data models in the same way without any ambiguity... In comparison to other modeling languages, CCTS uses a derivation by restriction methodology. This methodology enables the development of similar yet context specific physical/logical Business Information Entities using the conceptual Core Component templates. CCTS aligns to the OO-approach as expressed by UML. As such, the key model concepts of CCTS are easier to understand. However, these key model concepts do not in and of themselves guarantee unambiguous semantically meaningful, context specific business data models. Fixed core data types, consistent naming concepts — such as those identified in ISO 11179, specific modeling methodologies and detailed context driver principles are also required..." [source PDF from SAP AG]
[October 20, 2005] "How to Solve the Business Standards Dilemma: The Context Driven Business Exchange." By Gunther Stuhec. Technical Paper from the SAP Developer Network. October 2005. Copyright (c) 2005 SAP AG. 19 pages.
"Web Services are important, but are insufficient in solving integration requirements in collaborative business scenarios. This is because Web Services by themselves do not guarantee that the business information exchanged between different enterprises will be understood equally well by all systems. Web Services do not say anything about the semantics (meaning) of business information. Therefore Web Services are not enough for e-collaboration between business partners and do not ensure that systems can communicate effectively across company boundaries. A common understanding requires that the semantics of the business information is based on a grammar and library that is well known and understood. This requisite common understanding is only reachable if the semantics of the business information is based on a grammar and library that is well known and understood. The CCTS (Core Components Technical Specification) standard from UN/CEFACT provides the answer. CCTS methodology enables a common understanding of semantics at a syntax-independent level. SAP is using this international standard for harmonizing the business information used by Enterprise Services — the so-called SAP Global Data Types (GDTs)." [source PDF from SAP AG]
Recent note on CCTS:
"... CCTS is a semantic based, syntax neutral modeling standard that is an implementaton layer of the data constructs defined in ISO 11179. CCTS does the heavy lifting if you will of developing any syntax based interchange — XML, EDI or other.
Its key advantage is that it provides for syntax neutral conceptual data models that are expressed in the same semantics, regardless of industry or purpose. The context aspects of CCTS provide for the expression of the conceptual data models as physical/logical data models that are: (1) tailored for specific exchanges/industries/applications and (2) fully interoperable with all other contextual expressions. CCTS is being adopted by a wide range of public and private sector organizations, and is forming the basis for the UN's ebusiness standards of the future.UBL is pure CCTS, OAGIS has already used CCTS as the basis for their 9.0 release, and other standards bodies — such as AIAG, RosettaNet, and CIDX — are developing plans for transitioning their underlying data models to CCTS. In addition, these same organizations are looking at adopting the UN/CEFACT XML NDR approach that has been designed from the ground up to optimize the use of XSD for CCTS artifacts. The UN/CEFACT NDRs build on the UBL NDRs and provide for a consistent approach in creating CCTS based XSDs.
Although there is currently a short list of CCTS enabled tools, we see that changing in the near term. The GEFEG tool can already do CCTS modeling, as well as transformations from CCTS to UBL and UN/CEFACT conformant schema. SAP is incorporating CCTS and UN/CEFACT into their underlying data structures and XML constructs, and working with standards organizations and other clients on adopting CCTS. Oracle is going down that path as well..." [Mark Crawford (SAP Standards Architect), posting to XML-DEV January 23, 2006]