DANGA FOR CLOUD BUSINESS: On what does the interoperability solution of the UN/CEFACT CCTS rest?

The UN/CEFACT Core Components Technical Specification (CCTS and ISO 15000-5) is developed by the UN/CEFACT Techniques and Methodologies Group (TMG), one of the permanent working groups of the UN/CEFACT. The most important goal of the UN/CEFACT TMG is the development of information and communication technology specifications and recommendations for the other UN/CEFACT working groups. The UN/CEFACT TMG group also developed the UN/CEFACT Modelling Methodology (UMM).

What is the goal of the UN/CEFACT CCTS ?
The UN/CEFACT Core Components Technical Specification (CCTS) provides in a syntax-neutral methodology for the design and development of semantic building blocks.

The goal of the specification is to provide a solution oriented approach for the well-known interoperability question. For years the lack of information interoperability between Business supporting systems has been a restricting factor in the realization of inter-enterprise collaborative Business processes and data exchange.

The UN/CEFACT CCTS constitutes the basis for the development of a grammar that organizations can use to develop new Business vocabularies. Those new vocabularies contribute to improving and simplifying the way parties communicate with each other across Business boundaries (applications and systems) and domains (sectors). To eliminate the interoperability problems the use of one generic grammar language is advised.

The UN/CEFACT takes care of the development and maintenance of a universal Core Component Library (CCL) and Data Type Catalogue with free access for the Core Component community.

What boundary conditions apply ?
For a proper working of the CCTS concept all standards organizations need to ensure their core components are included in the Core Component Library (CCL) and/or need to open up their libraries to others.

At the moment only a few standards organizations have adopted and partially implemented the CCTS approach. OAGIS and OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL) took the CCTS as a basis for the development of their message libraries. Some other standards organizations that adopted the CCTS approach are RosettaNet, CIDX, HR-XML en ACORD.

What approach does the CCTS takes in solving the interoperability question ?
The approach of the Core Components Technical Specification is based on commonly accepted and publicitely available Core Components and derived Business Information Entities. The most atomic information parts for assembling the core components and information entities, up to a complete Business document, are the Core Data Types (CDT).

The foundation for the interoperability solution of the UN/CEFACT CCTS are the Core Data Types (CDTs) and the Business Data Types (BDTs) which are stored in the Data Type Catalogue of the UN/CEFACT. All other Core Components and Business Information Entities are based on these atomic information parts.

Given the fact that all standards organizations that adopted the CCTS approach have based their message libraries on these atomic information parts and are making use of the Data Type Catalogue the future of the CCTS looks promising.

The OAGIS and the OASIS UBL standards took over the Core Data Types and Business Data Types as a set of Unqualified Data Types (UDT) in addition to their own specific data types. However since the UN/CEFACT CCTS was developed only recently these organizations have not yet been able to incorporate all of the CCTS concepts. Although it should be mentioned that the OASIS UBL standard was ahead of the UN/CEFACT.

Key principes of the CCTS Data Types
There are two kinds of Data Types: Core Data Types (CDT) and Business Data Types (BDT).

The Core Data Types identify the most atomic pieces of Business information and should be considered as generic data types. Every Core Data Type consists of a Content Component and one or more Supplementary Components.

The Content Component is the carrier of the actual value and the Supplementary Component give meaning to this value. Every Content Component and Supplementary Component has a Primitive Type that sets the initial Value Domains. The Value Domain of the Content Component defines the set of permissible values for the Core Data Type but is constrained by its Supplementary Component.

The Core Data Types defines the value space for the Core Component (CC). The Business Data Types for the Business Information Entity (BIE).

Example:
The Core Data Type Amount.Type contains a Content Component that carries the value and a Supplementary Component that gives meaning to that value.

CDT = Amount. Type
Primitive = Decimal
Content Component = 12 (Amount. Content)
Supplementary Component = EUR (Amount. Currency. Code)

The Core Components Technical Specification provides a fixed list of Core Data Types in the Data Type Catalogue. The catalogue contains the list of the UN/CEFACT permissible Representation Terms, Core Data Types and Business Data Types.

The list of Core Data Types includes types such as Amount. Type, Binary. Object. Type, Code. Type, Date. Type, Date. Time. Type, Duration. Type, Graphic. Vector, Identifier. Type, etcetera.

Focus areas of the CCTS are:
- Core Components (CC's):
Core Components are semantic buidling blocks, conceptual in nature, that can be used for all aspects of data and information modelling.

- Business Information Entities (BIE's)
Business Information Entities are context-specific uses of conceptual core components within a specific business domain. BIE's are always derived from CC's.

Import startingpoint for the methodology is the use of the Dictionary Entry Name (DEN). This is the unique official name of the core component in the dictionary. The CCTS specifies that the dictionary content shall be in the English Language following the primary Oxford English Dictionary English spellings to assure unambiguous spelling.

The Core Components Technical Specification provides companies a semantic base for the support of different XML-languages for electronic communication. The CCTS enables semantic mapping of components between different libraries.

What is the status on solving the interoperability question ?
In the UBL Developers Community Mark Crawford answers my question How will CCTS improve the interoperability between one or more communication partners, standards and systems as follows:

"The Data Type interoperability is just one aspect of the interoperability of CCTS. People are referring to the base data types from CEFACT, but much more importantly, they are doing this in the development of their syntax neutral data models. The Data Types are the basis for both the conceptual and logical data models. The conceptual data model and semantic focus are the keys to interoperability as every logical data model is derived from a single ubiquituous data model."

In other words the CCTS aims at realizing universal semantic interoperability of Business Information through one single conceptual data model from which all other context-specific logical data models are derived.

This means that the necessary interoperability can only be obtained when all data models from the different standards are derived from the CCTS conceptual data model, next to the use of the Data Type Catalogue and the Core Component Library (CLL).

Likely this will not happen in the next few years because the impact is very extreme. I do not believe that standard organizations and others are willing to abandon their approaches and knowledge base in favor of interoperability. Other less extreme initiatives will soon be launched and build upon the CCTS or follow a new direction (web ontology).

One thing is sure, all of us are behind the idea that Informationinteroperability should be realized by using one common notion of the meaning of data but the way this will be done is not yet determined.

Once the selected principle can be incorporated in systems and applications then interoperability will be commonly accepted.

I will stay on top of the latest developments of interoperability and will soon be back with more.