the XAware Sandbox EDIFACT project requirements
A few weeks ago I wrote about the missing support for EDIFACT and derived standards in Open Source XML-based Transformation Tools such as XAware and Chainbuilder.
The goal was to get the people behind these communities motivated to provide the means and tools for managing Community projects. One of these will of course be the development of EDIFACT functionality.
Meanwhile the XAware Company has established a Sandbox environment for Community Members to start their development projects but moreover to enable knowledge transfer and share prebuilt transformation routines and connectors / adaptors.
The guidelines and procedures for contributing code to the core software are under development. These will include coding guidelines and standards, test and certification guidelines, contributor agreement required for developers wishing to contribute code to the project, acceptance criteria and procedures for the adoption into the core project.
One of the first Community projects will be the development of EDIFACT functionality. A short summary of the UN/EDIFACT message structure can be found in my bloart Short description of the EDIFACT Message Structure.
People from XAware-europe, Atos Origin, freelancers and private persons are participating on a voluntary basis to establish the first XAware Sandbox project, the EDIFACT functionality. Last week the functional requirements and technical design were discussed in the Netherlands based on a draft proposal from one of the participants.
The goal is to establish a generic approach that will become available for the whole community. The preliminary functional requirements and technical design are described hereafter. You are welcome to join us in the development of the EDIFACT functionality or to comment on the preliminary requirements and design approach.
