Scenarios

Another important element of OIOUBL are the scenario packages.

Their purpose is to illustrate the procurement process from a business perspective and to show how these processes can be implemented using OIOUBL documents.

The experiences gained during the development of OIOUBL demonstrated that it is too complicated to describe procurement as one single process. There are simply too many possible combinations available for the various document types. The solution to this has been to describe some of these possibilities as scenarios.

Scenarios can be considered descriptions of the expected reactions of sender and receiver in the specific situations. The scenario packages complement the other elements in the OIOUBL package but unlike many of these, the scenarios are not normative.

The introduction to the six scenario descriptions (Ref. S01) identifies the six scenario packages prepared for OIOUBL, covering the following areas:

• Advanced Ordering (Ref. S03)
• Basic Procurement Process (Ref. S02)
• Complex Delivery (Ref. S05)
• Procurement in Complex Organizations (Ref. S06)
• Complex Payment Processes (Ref. S07)
• Exchange of Catalogs(Ref. S04)

Included in each scenario packages are a number of valid xml-documents. These serve as examples on documents related to the scenario.