Information technology -- Business Operational View -- Part 10: IT-enabled coded domains as semantic components in business transactions

1 Scope

This part of ISO/IEC 15944 serves as a methodology and tool for the use of widely used standards, specifications, authority files, etc., of a “codes representing X” nature in business transactions involving the making of (legally-binding) commitments, based on common business practices, and doing so in an IT-enabled manner. The key characteristics of coded domains include:

they are rule-based;

they have a Source Authority;

they are used in support of commitment exchange among Persons engaged in Open-edi business transactions through their IT systems;

they support requirements for unambiguousness in the semantics of the electronic data interchange (EDI) among autonomous parties while also supporting localization and multilingual human interface equivalency (HIE) requirements; and,

they are IT-enabled as per the rules, criteria and specifications of this part of ISO/IEC 15944.

This part of ISO/IEC 15944 supports all three strategic directions for standards development of ISO/IEC JTC1: namely “portability”, “interoperability”, and “cultural adaptability”.

A key objective of this part of ISO/IEC 15944 is to ensure that existing standards of a “codes representing X” nature can be used in electronic business transactions among parties engaged in Open-edi. Open-edi pertains to flows of information using information bundles which cause pre-defined (or pre-definable) changes in the states of the IT systems of the parties to such electronic data interchanges. Parties using Open-edi make the commitment that they will adhere to the predefined rules associated with the registered associated scenario attributes, roles and information bundles (including registered semantic components). The semantics here are identified and referenced via an identifier. With such ID codes can be associated multiple human interface equivalents in many forms and languages. Use of this part of ISO/IEC 15944 therefore facilitates semantic interoperability requirements in support of “cultural adaptability”.

Another purpose of this part of ISO/IEC 15944 is to specify the key elements of an IT-enabled coded domain, whose membership is determined by a Source Authority, for use in support of electronic data interchange (EDI) among autonomous parties engaged in commitment exchange. The approach taken is that of the separation of the IT interface requirements of semantic interoperability from their (multiple) human interface linguistic equivalents. This will also ensure that the level of certainty and explicitness required in the completeness of the semantics of the recorded information interchange is appropriate to the goal of the business transaction, i.e. the unambiguous requirement.