Technical Blueprint version 10

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1.Introduction

1.1Background

The Dutch and international flowers and plants business is continuously reinventing itself. Innovation of products, services, business processes and models, as well as technology, permanently put new demands on the volume and depth of data exchange among business partners in the supply chain.
VBN codes make up the core of all data exchange in our business. New developments can’t escape touching the VBN code system as well. By now, the current coding practice has stretched the system to its limits. That’s why the Linnaeus project was started. Its aim is to suit the system to the demands of the future, such that it meets the requirements of:

flexibility: it should be easy to add new building blocks
adaptability: changes should be effected easily and fast
migratability: the system must implemented in a stepwise fashion
cost effectiveness: all this against acceptable costs and effort.

In 2004, a ‘Conceptual Blueprint’ of the modernized VBN code system was presented. The new approach provided the required functionality:

detailed specification of products
table driven control of lot specification rules and constraints
improved specification of lots
specification of composite lot components
logical grouping of features types
product code list clean-up
translation of code lists in multiple languages.

Currently, the sector is preparing to implement ‘Linnaeus’. To that end, the conceptual blueprint had to be converted into a ‘technical blueprint’ .

1.2Purpose

Purpose of this technical blueprint is to provide a complete, precise and unambiguous technical specification of the Linnaeus code system, in particular of the way in which the new system will be reflected in the data exchange among parties, e.g. in code lists and EDI messages.
The contents and structure of code lists and EDI messages described in this document must enable implementation managers, system architects, designers and programmers, to adapt the systems of the involved parties to correctly produce, receive and process the exchanged ‘Linnaeus data’.
To software developers, this technical specification will provide information about the impact of the Linnaeus coding system on their business applications. The introduction of Linnaeus will take place in several steps. The exact contents and timing of those steps is described in a separate ‘Migration plan’.
The blueprint does not impose imperative guidelines or directives with regards to the realisation within business applications of the involved supply chain partners, but is restricted to giving general suggestions and recommendations.

1.3Principles

A conceptual model may be technically implemented in several ways. In translating the conceptual blueprint to this technical one, the following principles were followed:

maximum correspondence: the conceptual model will be mapped to the technical model as faithfully as possible
minimum redundancy: data will be captured in one single data structure as much as possible, reducing duplication to the minimum
optimal efficiency: the data structures are designed such as to allow for the most efficient (fast) processing
minimum impact: the format and contents of existing data structures will be retained as much as possible.

1.4Contents

In addition to this introduction, this documents contains the following sections:

Chapter 2: presents Linnaeus’ technical data model
Chapter 3: specifies the structure and contents of Linnaeus code lists
Chapter 4: deals with the way the code lists are distributed to supply chain partners
Chapter 5: describes the impact of the Linnaeus code system on the contents and structure of the EDIFACT messages employed by the floricultural industry
Chapter 6: makes suggestions and recommendations as to the implementation of the Linnaeus system within the business applications of supply chain partners.

1.5Status

The present document is the second version of the technical blueprint and the first one in English. Compared to the previous (Dutch) version 2.8, some minor text adjustments and corrections have been made.
Ownership of, and further responsibility for this document rests with VBN. Suggestions for corrections, additions or elucidation of its contents may be submitted to VBN. These suggestions will be evaluated, possibly yielding a new release of the technical blueprint.

1.6References

For further information about the background of and motives behind the Linnaeus project and its conceptual setup, please refer to the following (Dutch language) documents:

‘Visieontwikkeling Coderingen in de Sierteeltsector’ versie 1.0, July, 1999
‘Linnaeus Conceptuele Blauwdruk’ versie 4.1, April 15, 2005

This technical blueprint is partly based on the following documents:

‘Linnaeus Ontwerp en Implementatierichtlijnen’ versie 3.0, March 4, 2005
‘Beschrijving Linnaeus/FlorEcom Code listen’ versie 0.4, February 24, 2005
‘Proof of Concept’ part 1, February 11, 2005 and 2 of April 8, 2005.

The abovementioned documents may be obtained through VBN or VGB/HBAG.

2.Linnaeus data model

The structure of the Linnaeus coding system is reflected in a ‘technical’ data model. That data model differentiates between fixed and variable data about floricultural products.

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