IDA FAQ 1. Amount of information that partners are obligated to provide Q. Product characteristics are to be exchanged. Electrical, mechanical (size) Characteristics, and package info are mentioned as data items included in the dictionary and that is true they are. However not all company databases carry every piece of that data. The question is this, if a company does not have all the data that is specified will the exchange take place? My preference is that it would take place. A. Neither 2A9 nor 2A10 specify the amount of information partners are obligated to exchange. 2A9 specifically says that the responding partner may provide less or more information than the query requests (although they have to give the "reason" when they do not send the requested information). 2A10 also does not expect partners to provide all information in the RNTD. Sony has a strong requirement to give the receiving engineers some control over the kinds and amounts of information received, and so 2A10 requires the partners to first agree on the kinds and amounts of information and to put that agreement in the Information Distribution Agreement. Since both partners agree on this, both should be happy. And no one is obligated to provide more information than they want to. 2. Role and structure of IDA Q. Is the Information Distribution Agreements(IDA) for the 2A10 equivalent to a trading partner agreement? Do you anticipate those being unique for the 2A10? If it is not a TPA, can you please send a sample document. A. The 2A10 specs require the partners to have an IDA as a prerequisite to use of the PIP, but it does not define how such an IDA should look (I'll explain why later). It only requires that it have a mutually agreed ID, which must be specified in the PIP. What is the legal position of the IDA? It is assumed to be an appendix to the TPA (whether it is actually appended depends on the partners). This defines the legality of the obligation but leaves open the where and how it was defined and where it actually located. Why is this so vague? One reason is to enable the Subscribe and Publish model where the "offer" to provide information and the web-based registration process is assumed to create a legal agreement between the two partners to send and receive certain information. We don't feel we can define how such and "agreement" should be written/realized. Secondly, this agreement may often be reached in meetings and shown in the meeting minutes (although a separate document would probably be more useful). Thirdly, the agreement may be reached and/or changed in a telephone call between the two partners with the call verified by a follow-up email. We don't want to disallow any of these methods as long as the partners can identify the agreement in the future (hence the need for the ID). However, a separate, partially standardized document is probably the best management solution and Sony is working up such a document in a trial-and- error basis with its partners. We initially see this document as a Word document or text document, but in the future, adding XML tags will allow an automatic interface with backend systems (which interface is out-of-scope for the PIP) such as PIP 2A9 defined for their TOC document. If the implementing partners start demanding such an XML definition, we will provide it, but none are ready to use it now and more human-oriented are wanted now. Slide #7 from the Implementors Workshop (7/25) shows one way to define the IDA, using the concept of "groups" that then can be pointed to by the "Position" tag in the PIP: -- from slide #7 ----------------- This Information Distribution Agreement (ID=Sony-Sharp-003) was made between Sony and Sharp on August 23, 2002. The dictionary to be used is the RNTD version 2.0. The information agreed to be distributed is as follows. #### Group 1 PIO: ID=Sony-NPA001; Name=Sharp TFT Announcement; FileFormat=MsWord; ContentType=NewProductAnnouncement #### Group 2 Properties: RNclass=Display-TFT; Product Number; screen size; refresh speed; … … #### Group 3 … … … … --------- end of slide