RE: AS2 XML requirements (was Re: HL7 Standards Process)

[chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Chris Davenport)]

>> > supported in AS1. The AS1 specification is tightly intertwined with
>> > references to RFC 1767 and all examples are based on RFC 1767 payloads.
>> Now is the time to add this definitive text to AS1.
>
>I totally agree. For consistency I suggest using similar text as what
>appears in section 2 on page 6 of AS2.

This is not a simple change to AS1.  I believe the text you are referring
to is: (section 2, page 6 of AS2-07):

    In addition to the enveloping and MIME media type options defined in
    sections 4.2.x and 4.3.x of "MIME-based Secure EDI" [AS1], this
    specification enables the transport of payload objects containing
    other MIME media types. Implementors are to follow the
    appropriate specifications identified under "References"
    in [MIME-TYPES], for the type of object being transmitted.

Putting this into AS1 would contradict RFC1767 which says that if the
payload is not X12 or EDIFACT then it must be transported as
application/EDI-consent.  In effect RFC1767 would need to be rendered
obsolete and I think this would involve more that the simple addition
of a few paragraphs to AS1.  Is this what you had in mind?

I'm quite happy to see the EDI-consent sub-type disappear.  As Gunther
was at pains to point out a couple of years ago, it raises important
interoperability issues.  How does an AS1 application know what to do
with a payload that arrives as EDI-consent?  It doesn't know whether
to pass it to an XML parser, an HL7 application or whatever.  The answer
given at the time was that it would be decided by a trading partner
agreement but this has always seemed unsatisfactory to me.

The text quoted above also seems to imply that AS1 is restricted in the
types of payloads that it can transport.  As I understand it the only
"restriction" over and above AS2 is that binary types must have a
mail-safe content transfer encoding applied (eg. base64).

Am I reading this wrong?

Regards,

Chris.

--
Chris Davenport              chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Davros Computer Systems