Guidelines for the specification of electronic product catalogues in standard Gellish English Guidelines
for the specification of
Electronic Product Catalogues
in
Gellish English

Version 0.5

1

Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 1

2

Summary ............................................................................................................................................... 2

3

Catalogue development scenarios ........................................................................................................ 3

4

Product models ...................................................................................................................................... 3

5

Requirements to become correct Gellish English.................................................................................. 4

6

Product requirements models ................................................................................................................ 5

7

Guidelines.............................................................................................................................................. 6

7.1

Scales and units of measure......................................................................................................... 10

8

Catalogue items ................................................................................................................................... 10

9

Individual items................................................................................................................................... 10

10

References ........................................................................................................................................... 11


1 Introduction
This document contains guidelines on how to express buyers and suppliers product catalogues in an
electronic form suitable for searching and E-Commerce via the Web, such that the information is
computer interpretable and system independent. Therefore, the catalogues are written in the ISO standards
based Gellish English language.
The document is intended to support product catalogue developers and engineers in the creation of
electronic catalogues for E-Commerce via the Web. It is also intended to provide guidelines for software
developers who develop software tools or extensions of E-Commerce software to import and/or export
Catalogue item data written in Gellish English.
Supplier catalogues written in Gellish English simplify the selection and comparison of products. When
also buyers catalogues or requirements specifications are written in Gellish it becomes possible to provide
computer supported selection and comparison of products.
Gellish English is a formal and structured subset of natural English. Gellish English is intended to enable
information storage and information exchange between computer systems in a neutral, system independent
way.
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03/06/2005 Gellish English is a variant of Gellish. Other variants are for example Gellish Nederlands (Dutch), Gellish
Deutsch (German), etc. as far as Gellish dictionaries in those languages are available. Expressions in one
Gellish variant can be translated automatically to any of the other variants.
Gellish English is defined in the Gellish Dictionary / Taxonomy / Ontology. It is based on ISO 10303-221
and ISO 15926. The Gellish Dictionary / Taxonomy is integrated with a Gellish Knowledge base that
contains knowledge about products and processes, expressed in Gellish English.
The combined Gellish Knowledge Base is also called STEPlib.
This guidelines document is part 3 of a series of guidelines documents. Each of those document provides
guidelines from the perspective of a particular usage scenario. The intention is that the series will include
guidelines at least for the following scenarios:
Scenario 1: Development of a nomenclature (list of terms, including composed terms), a dictionary and a
taxonomy (with textual and with modeled definitions).
Scenario 2: Development and exchange of knowledge models with and without product decomposition.
Scenario 3: Development of product catalogues.
Process:
Development of a product catalogue.
Application area: Products of a particular supplier, for example of electro technical
components.
Type of user:
Developer providing services to the supplier.
Result:
A description of the context of the envisioned usage. A process
description (procedure) of the way in which such a developer can develop
such a catalogue. A description of the form that such a catalogue would
take.
Scenario 4: Exchange of catalogues as are developed in Scenario 1.
Scenario 5: Integration of a product catalogue in a business process and its linkage with other data.
Scenario 6: Exchange of information about (individual) realistic imagined or observed physical products.
Including to be delivered as delivered products.
Scenario 7: Exchange of transaction information (DEMO, VISI, EDIFACT).
Scenario 8: Exchange of requirements for the hand-over of project deliverables (product models and
documents).
Note: Implementation of information storage and exchange based on Gellish messages not only requires
the above mentioned guidelines, but also requires scenarios for implementation and for usage. In other
words, a description of the process of implementation in an organization and a description of the new
work process for the end-users. For example, the new work process for a designer or buyer who is going
to use the new product catalogue. The latter two scenarios do not belong to the tasks of the Gellish
Forum.
2 Summary
This documents provides guidelines in which the following relation types are used:
Relation
type id
Relation type name
Required first
role
Allowed role
player
Required second
role
Allowed role
player
5282
shall have as possessed
aspect a
possessor physical
object
possessed
aspect
aspect
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03/06/2005 5238
shall have a part with as
possessed aspect a
conceptual
possessor via
part
physical object
conceptually
possessed role
possessed
aspect
1146
is a specialization of
subtype concept supertype concept
1726
is a qualification of
qualifier
concept
(qualitative aspect)
nature concept
4714
can be a role of a
conceptual player
of a role
physical object
conceptually
played role
role
4751
shall commonly be
compliant with
common
compliancy
criterion
information commonly
specified
physical
object
4846
shall be one of the
common options
possessor
aspect common
options
collection
of
classes
4730
is an element in a
collection of classes
collected class
concept
collecting plural
class
collection of
classes
5279
can be quantified on
scale as
commonly
quantified
characteristic
characteristic common
quantifier of a
characteristic
mathematical
space

Note 1: Sometimes an inverse phrase is used to refer to a relation type. For example, Figure 4 and Figure 5
use the inverse phrase for the name of relation type 4730 is a collection of classes including instead of
the phrase mentioned in the above table.
Note 2: that this document also refers to relation types that are used in the Gellish dictionary/knowledge
base, but are not directly used for the specification of product catalogues.

3 Catalogue development scenarios
Catalogue items are specifications for types of things. However, those specifications can be made for
different purposes. Each purpose may require particular guidelines. Therefore the following scenarios are
distinguished:
- Catalogues that exclude the specification of packaging.
- Catalogues that include the specification of delivery of collections in various packages.
- Buyer catalogues. A buyers specification has a role as requirement in an inquiry or in an order.
- Supplier catalogues. A suppliers specification has a role as offering, commitment or guarantee in
an offer. It has also a role as a requirement towards this internal production process within the
suppliers organization.
The specification of catalogue items in a Gellish Table implies that the catalogue item specifications can
be imported in application systems. Apart from that this document does not consider specifications about
possible applications of catalogue items. For example, it excludes piping classes, that specify under what
process conditions catalogue items may be used.
4 Product models
Any product catalogue contains specifications about catalogue items. Catalogue items are kinds of
products. Other terms for the same things are types of products, product types or classes. They should
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03/06/2005 be distinguished from individual products, such as those that are actually delivered and that may or may
not be conform the specification for the types. Catalogue items are subtypes of more general supertype
kinds of products and inherits the aspects that are defined for those supertypes. For example, MESC item
76.65.79.766.1 and MESC item 76.65.79.766.2 are both product types that are a subtype of MESC item
type 76.65.79.766 for which a template is defined in MESC.
When a specification of a catalogue item or for its supertype is expressed in Gellish English, then such a
specification is expressed in a product specification model, which consists of a number of lines in a
Gellish