Thomas J. Fennelly, of Unisource Worldwide, said he "was waiting for
someone to mention the [SPLC] code used in the transportation industry.
The [SPLC] code stands for Standard Points Location Code. Any comments?"
>From the context of Paul Wakelam's original question, though, it sounded
like Paul was mostly interested in business location identifiers because
he specifically mentioned the D-U-N-S and the UCC/EAN Global Location
Number (GLN).
But Tom Fennelly makes an interesting point, though: there're tons of
different coding systems for indicating places and businesses, including
the SPLC, which is maintained by the same people who do the motor SCAC -
the NMFTA. The SPLC identifies each point in the US, Canada and Mexico
which originates and receives freight using a code based on State,
County and City.
Right now, there's an effort afoot to gather up, analyze and compile the
common code sets used in UN/EDIFACT and ANSI ASC X12, proprietary or
not, for inclusion in a new standard being developed by the ISO/IEC
JTC1/SC32/WG2-Metadata (and WG1- Open-edi), ISO/IEC 18022:
Identification, Mapping, and IT-enablement of Widely Used Encodable
Value Domains. I suppose this is more than just busy work, since it
really could assist in the effective use of e-business standards -
especially new ones like ebXML.
There are the obvious useful ISO standards, like ISO 4217:1995 - Codes
for the Representation of Currencies and Funds, at
http://www.bsi-global.com/iso4217currency; ISO 3166-1:1997 - Codes for
the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions -- Part
1: Country codes, at http://www.din.de/gremien/nas/nabd/iso3166ma/; and
ISO 639-2: Codes for the Representation of Names of Languages-Part 2:
Alpha-3 Code, at http://lcweb.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/. And
UN/CEFACT, the people who are responsible for UN/EDIFACT, have codes
such as UN/ECE Recommendation No. 20 - Codes for Units of Measure Used
in International Trade, at http://www.unece.org/cefact/rec/rec20en.htm;
and UN/LOCODE 2000-2: Code for Ports and other Locations, at
http://www.unece.org/locode/
Besides the ISO and UN/CEFACT standard codes, proprietary ones abound,
which are used so extensively that justice would dictate they be
described in the new standard; e.g., the NRF Size and Color Codes and
the UCC/EAN UPC.
This is where I could use some help. Would you all gather up the names
of common code lists you use in X12 and EDIFACT, open or proprietary,
and send them to me? Then I'll have a realistic notion of what's really
used out there so it can be included in ISO/IEC 18022. This has the
practical function of making these codes available and documented for
ebXML. But more importantly, if I can gather up enough of them, I might
have justification for joining the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC32/WG2-Metadata Work
Group when they meet in exotic pleasure spots like Sante Fe, Geneva or
Helsinki.
There *is* a method to my madness.
William J. Kammerer
FORESIGHT Corp.
4950 Blazer Pkwy.
Dublin, OH USA 43017-3305
+1 614 791-1600
Visit FORESIGHT Corp. at http://www.foresightcorp.com/
"accelerating time-to-trade"
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