Minutes of WSA informal telcon on 2002-08-01

Present

BEA Systems David Orchard

ChevronTexaco Roger Cutler

France Telecom Shishir Garg

Idokorro Mobile Mark Baker

IONA Eric Newcomer

MartSoft Corp. Jin Yu

Nortel Networks Abbie Barbir

SeeBeyond Technology Corp Ugo Corda

Sun Microsystems, Inc. Doug Bunting

W. W. Grainger, Inc. Daniel Austin

W3C Hugo Haas

W3C David Booth

[Daniel]

Daniel is scribe

Mike C posted an informal agenda

Mike C: requirements document has been updated, changes by Chris F, Sharad, Daniel

Mike C: can't yell at CHris, he's not here

Mike C: we don't intend to make an substantive changes in AUgust for summer holiday

Mike C: we are allowed however to make editorial and administrative changes

Mike C: some of CHris's changes were incorrect

[dougb]

Daniel isn't typing

Zakim, who's talking?

[dbooth]

Daniel: I saw there was confusion about changes that were made.

[Zakim]

dougb, listening for 10 seconds I heard sound from the following: +1.603.863.aaaa (13%), Hugo_Haas (14%), ??P7 (100%), ??P8 (85%), DOrchard (4%)

[dbooth]

... I'll volunteer to make the corrections to it.

[Daniel]

Mike C: we need to get this out in hours for Sept. publish?

Hugo: no, it's a working draft, let's not delay for a few small changes

Hugo: asks if Daniel cannot live w/ doc as it is

Daniel: no, I was just volunterring to fix it if it was an issue

Mike C: I'm happy with it, unless there is a dealbreaker, let's leave it

Daniel: ok

Mike C: does anyone else have any substantive problems with it, as it is?

Daniel: we will publish early Sept. wth changes

Hugo: that's fine

Mike C: hearing no diagreement, let's go ahead

Mike C: Do we need to modify dates?

[dbooth]

Daniel: Hugo, if you tell me the pub date, then I can fix the date. I was going to fix HTML errors to make it valid.

Hugo: Make it next Wednesday.

... Running Tidy will prob fix the HTML.

Daniel: I have a stylesheet that fixes the HTML also, and I'll post it to the group.

[Daniel]

Daniel: document date will be AUg 7

Hugo: also change previopus versions URLs

Daniel: ok

ACTION: Daniel to make mods to reqs document (what else is new?)

[dbooth]

Daniel, type "ACTION: Daniel to ..."

[Daniel]

thanks :)

Mike C: end of reqs doc issues

Mike C: we have very few ppl here today, we should not make substantive decision til sept.

Daniel: do we have a quorum?

Mike C: I don't think so...we are just talking

Mike C: Chris says we have a moral requirement to publish the arch doc asap

Daniel: if we have a quorum, why can't we make decisions?

[dbooth]

Daniel: Why are we unable to make decisions in August if we have a quorum?

[Daniel]

Mike C: we agreed to that a few weeks ago

Mike C: understanding that we are on break in August

Mike C: lots of vacations in August, so no official decisions

Mike C: we want to start crystallizing consensus on arch doc w/o making decisions

(scribe notes that this is sketchy)

Mike C: we currently have almost no idea what to do with the arch doc

Mike C: I suggested some options in my recent email

Mike C: gather references, as examples

Mike C: we sent mail to the OMG

Daniel: is this a task for the harvesting team only?

Mike C: general guidance for editors on how to articulate a reference architecture

Mike C: sent pointers to MS also

Mike C: what other things can we use for references?

Mike C: have members written other white papers etc?

Daniel: IBM has some papers

[MarkB]

this? http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/412/gottschalk.pdf

[Daniel]

Mike C: there is also some material from last year's workshop

Mike C: we need to ratchet up the level of the discussion of the document

MikeC: and move away from the abstractions we have been discussing

Mike C: I asked DaveO re BEA's WS products

Mike C: Dave, do you have a URL?

Mike C: anybody else?

IONA: we submitted a paper to the workshop

Mike C: that's a good thought

IONA: I think that's why the WS activity was started originally

Mike C: we should perhaps read these again

IONA: we also talked about future directions, perhaps that would help

Mike C: Mark B is there anything in Roy F's miserable thesis that deals with this?

Mark B: I think I would just go with the thesis

scribe notes that :"miserable", while a worthy description, was not part of Mike C's speech

[MarkB]

http://wwws.sun.com/software/sunone/

[Daniel]

Mike C: do we think this is a useful exercise?

Mike C: we need to understand each other's views to achieve consensus

D ave B: I think it's useful, but I wonder if it will take too long

[mnot]

starting point: http://dev2dev.bea.com/techtrack/detail.jsp?highlight=webservices

[Daniel]

Mike C: speaking of harvesting, I am still catching up, what is the status? we've heard about REST but that's it

Mike C: I haven't heard from many of the other things we have discussed

Mike C: can anyone give us an update?

Dave B: there's been a lot of work, ebXML, WSDL, REST

Dave B: I don't think we are ready to move forward, maybe DaveO's suggestion to move forward with SOAP is a good idea

[dbooth]

s/Dave B/Mark B/

[Daniel]

Mike C: it might be helpful...when was it posted to the mailing list?

[dbooth]

s/Dave B/Mark B/

[dougb]

Should point out that many of the papers at http://www.w3.org/2001/03/WSWS-popa/ aren't architectural though they may be descriptive.

[Daniel]

LOL scribe blows it, thinks Dave and Mark are interchangable

[dbooth]

s/Dave B/Mark B/

[Daniel]

NOte: above references to Dave B are to Mark B, apologies from scribe to both

Mike C: when was your message posted Mark?

[dougb]

I'd recommend having us (the members) pointing towards specific papers rather than asking all to read every WS Workshop paper.

[Daniel]

ACTION: Mark B to repost his harvesting discussion

Mike C: some of the people involved in harvesting besides Mark, any thoughts?

Mike C: what should the results of the harvesting be? links? pictures?

Mike C: summary papers? ideas from others?

Group: silence

Mark B: there are two major features that we harvested

Mark B: we also harvested or tried to harvest architectural elements, and got quite a bit done

Mark B: we should write this all done

Mark B: the current document identifies style elements, but not architectural elements

Mark B: I've proposed a new section to the doc to remedy this

Hao: should we use standards here?

[hugo]

[ I agree with Mark but won't try to unmute... ]

[Daniel]

Mike C: mo ichido kudasai?

Hao: what notation should we use?

Mike C: UML comes to mind, but I'm not sure...

+Daniel

+Daniel dammit

Zakim, add me to the bloody queue you foolish piece of trash

[Zakim]

I don't understand 'add me to the bloody queue you foolish piece of trash', Daniel. Try /msg Zakim help

[Daniel]

Dave O: UML was brought up in the TAG< and rejected, for good reasons

Dave O clarifies: wasn't rejected, was some pushback but no decision was made

Mark B: Dave suggested Krutchen's 4+1 view but Roy F. pushed back

ACTION: Daniel to post 4+1 model

[MarkB]

fwiw, Roy's view on 4+1; http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2001Dec/0023.html

[dbooth]

Daniel: Someone earlier suggested that we used UML, and I pushed back because I don't think UML captures architectural models well. I'm happy with a simple box model. I think we can establish all the ideas we need without any particular choice of notation.

[MarkB]

+1

[dougb]

Daniel doesn't want to put "don't use a notation" as an intersectional approach in the notes. Sorry Daniel...

[Daniel]

Hao: I was just thinking that we can just identify some use cases, independent of notation, and begin

LOL Daniel submits the idea that we should not choose any notation

Hao: start with something very simple, and work through use cases, avoiding notation wars

[dougb]

Question for the Harvesting team: Are we revisiting a discussion that's already happened within that group?

[Daniel]

DaveO: Mark correctly points out that we have only a functional approach in the current document

DaveO: Mark and I may disagree on certain elements in the architecture

DaveO: we need to deal with two issues: a) how are SOAP, WSDL extended and b) how they are used by ppl

DaveO: there is a very specific model in WSDL, that we can talk about

[MarkB]

zakim, who is barking?

[Zakim]

I don't understand your question, MarkB.

[Daniel]

DaveO: in the security spec, there are specific extensibility mechanisms, but no real way of specifying the means by which extensions are implemented

DaveO: there is no processing model, so there is much duplication of the SOAP processing model

DaveO: suggests principles of extension would be very useful in the arch doc

Mike C: I initiated (with Mark on the mailing list today) trying to find the intersection fwhat we can all agree upon

of^

Mike C: such as accepting the SOAP processing model, which may lie in that intersection

Mike C: how can we make this happen?

Mike C: do we need additional discussion? how do we move ahead?

DaveO: the way I think we should do this is similar to the way the TAG has done, specfying protocols, etc.

DaveO: the principles are most important, and establishing them

DaveO: e.g. using URIs in SOAP

DaveO: may books have verbiage about use of URIs, including character level information and cannonicalization

Daveo: this might go into the identifiers section

DaveO: also combining specs that other ppl have created

Joe Hui: there is still a potential conflict between SOAP processing model and REST model

DaveO: REST doesn't have a processing model at the same level of abstraction as SOAP

Joe Hui: aren't orchestration and processing model related?

Doug: I think that what we are disucssing is the layered model

Doug: REST by design doesn't talk much about processing behind the HTTP server system boundary

Doug: SOAP explicitly does go there

Doug: it may be that we need to include the processing model in our discussions

Doug: we will have to extend the REST model

Mark B: responds to Doug - as Doug say, SOAP extends REST, because of the circumstances, no explicit processing model in REST

Mark B: SOAP is much richer than REST but not radically different

Mike C: Soap is more about server to server communication

Mike C: other models include the back-end processing

Mark B: SOAP by itself doesn't buy you very much, it's only when it is used by an application

Mike C: I was thinking of CORBA or DCOM

DaveO: why can't we talk about SOAP when going from server to server?

[DaveO]

zakim, who is here?

[Zakim]

On the phone I see ??P0, ??P1, ??P2, ??P4, ??P7, MarkB, Dbooth, +1.650.875.aacc, +1.408.737.aadd, DOrchard, ??P14, Hugo_Haas (muted), ??P15, ??P8, Joseph_Hui, Tim_Jones

On IRC I see Tim_Jones, Ugo, dougb, DaveO, mnot, dbooth, Daniel, RRSAgent, Zakim, MarkB, Roger, mchampion, HFN_away, hugo

[Daniel]

Mike C: I didn't mean that...this is only one aspect of the system, others such as security, orchestration, etc. are also important to what we are doing

Mark B: I think the whole server to X concept is a red herring

[dougb]

Doug apologizes for raising a red (or pickled) herring.

[Daniel]

Mike C: Mark it sounds like you are more or less comfotable with Dave's doc at this point...

Mike C: picking up from there, one suggestion to consider would be to come up with a written record of what you think the processing model might be

Eric: I could try to help

Dave O: that is what I had started to do, I introduced the notion of two agents communicating, usually with XML, and then

Dave O: we started talking about the interactions and the formats and protocols to be used, this is a typical means of beginning

Eric: the SOAP model has some of this material, but not all

Dave o: what are the appropriate things to take out of SOAP and WSDL and then stitch them together

*scribe thinks this is a frenkenservice*

Eric: not sure to what extent this might be normative, but we should have that discussion

Mike C: we need to find some common ground on which we can all agree

Mike C: I agree with what Dave O said

[DaveO]

DaveO agrees with puttin' pen to paper

[Daniel]

Mike C: does WSDL have a processing model?

Eric: no

Dave O: no, and there is not much to tell people how to use it

Eric: WSDL doesn't even talk about SOAP

Hugo: yes it does

Dave O: we need to find a way to relate the processing model to WSDL

[mnot]

NB: was mnot, not hugo

[Daniel]

Eric: a lot of this is informative material rather than normative

[mnot]

(I think hugo is permanently muted? ;)

[Daniel]

scribe apologiezes to mnot

[mnot]

no worries

[Daniel]

Mike C: this is turning into an action item to the group to consider this...how should we proceed Dave, Eric

Eric: I'm happy to do so

Mike C: does this remind anyone of any other white papers or other sources of into

Eric: I wrote a book on WS, I can look through it

Dave O: I encourage ppl to submit info

Doug: the workshop materials are useful

DaveO: thinking has changed since then also

Eric: there is some data from MS, and others

Dave O: perhaps the chair should ask members for materials

ACTION: Mike C to query members w/regard to submitting their own materials on WS-arch

Mike C: Mark B are you comfortable with this?

Mark B: I think so

Eric: Mark please help us with this

[MarkB]

zakim, who is talking?

[Daniel]

Mark B: okay

[dbooth]

zakim, who is talking?

[Zakim]

MarkB, listening for 10 seconds I heard sound from the following: ??P1 (10%), DOrchard (14%)

[Daniel]

scribe unable to understand the call, due to noise

[Zakim]

dbooth, listening for 10 seconds I heard sound from the following: ??P1 (39%), ??P4 (39%), MarkB (39%), DOrchard (9%)

[Daniel]

MarkB: i'll be glad to help, and don't want to spend too much time on REST

[MarkB]

.. for now 8-)

[Daniel]

Mike C: I think it's useful to get a document published

Mike C: many press articles are not concentrating on these issues

Mike C: first step is harvesting

Zakim can't think as fast as I can type Dave

Mike C: we need to make progress on principles, esp. URIs

Mike C: what is a good way forward?

[dougb]

Notes it was Mike C who thought the workshop materials were generally useful and Doug who suggested reducing volume thorugh "submissions" process (some lines back).

[Daniel]

Mike C: does anyone diagree?

disagree

mark B: we should consider both long and short term views

[dougb]

? URI's still used improperly in SOAP 1.2 even after GET addition?

[Daniel]

Mark B: URIs are certainly a serious issue, but we need to decide what the short term goal is

thanks DOug

Mike C: let;s try to identify the low hanging fruit for the short term

Mike C: URIs may be an issue that we don't have to do lots of work on

Mark B: there are several features of URIs but we should consider what's important

Mark B: I need to go, sorry

Dave O: One of the things I want the document to take into account is what we've all learned rrecently

Dave O: we should be agressive about items like URI usage etc.

Dave O: e.g. we should provide some guidance about how to use these things

Dave O: like URIs

Mike C: what does that mean operationally?

Mike C: do we need to include previous arch discussions? Agressive how?

Dave O: we should write these things up explicitly to provide guidance to users

Dave O: I thin of WS-ARCH as an extension of existing technologies

Dave O: we should be clear about how to use these things, and explicit, e.g. stating which protocols to be used

Mike C: anyone else have any perspective on this?

Hao: we have done some harvesting for WSDL...are we going to do anything about the results of this?

Mike C: asks to repeat

[dougb]

I particularly like Dave O's comments about both refinements and extensions (of REST in particular) inherent in our proposed web services architecture.

[Daniel]

Hao: we've harvested a lot of stuff, what do we do with it?

Mike C: my understanding is that the harvesting is more of a collective activity

Mike C: and the editing is the domain of the editors

Daniel needs to leave...can someone else scribe for the remainder of the call?

[dougb]

I can make an attempt to fill Daniel's shoes.

[Daniel]

Thanks Doug!

[dougb]

DaveO: There is no try, only do...

[Daniel]

see you all next week

YodaO: no try, only do!

l8r

[dougb]

MikeC: Harvesting source for how we'll evaluate the editor's output (our architecture)

Hoa: Wants something more concrete.

[dbooth]

zakim, who is talking?

[dougb]

MikeC: What are u suggesting.

[Zakim]

dbooth, listening for 10 seconds I heard sound from the following: ??P1 (19%)

[dbooth]

zakim, please mute P1 temporarily

[Zakim]

sorry, dbooth, I do not see a party named 'P1'

[dougb]

Admonition from the chair (MikeC): Comment for the record: Do not put yourself on hold when you must step away if you have muzak on hold.

Hao: Make it more official, include harvesting material as an appendix.

MikeC: you're suggesting we pull this stuff together into an actual document

Hugo: I can be heard!

Hugo: Mainly harvesting material should be used as a checklist: See what we forgot (which concepts) and how they might fit.

MikeC: Might mean we have to worry less about appearance of this material.

MikeC: Comments on this? Any other words of advise?

Zulah: Did we talk about requirements document?

MikeC: That document will be published pretty much as is but with eye towards another publication early in Sep

Zulah: Objects to this publication (the one next week) due to missing decisions (agreements and approvals not reflected in the document).

MikeC: Chris F. and Daniel not on the call. Concensus was things would be better in an ideal world. This was just a working draft.

MikeC: May even publish again first week we're back in Sep

Zulah: Are minutes the official record?

MikeC: They are but editors sometimes miss a few agreements. he'll track these issues and work with editors to address in later (Sep) version.

MikeC: No problem with publishing requirements as (another) working draft?

Zulah: Not the first working draft (second).

Hugo: No objections to Zulah forwarding comments to Daniel and / or Chris. Don't hold publication because of this. "Just" a working draft.

MikeC: If Daniel can make changes without changing schedule, great. If he can't, also fine.

Hugo: Basically, publish or perish.

Zulah: Will send email to editors. Making point we're working towards a deadline (eg. RTF deadline was met but materials didn't go into document).

MikeC: Issues may have to do with transition of chairs. He was pushing harder on some things and less on others. Will improve process going forward.

Zulah: Comfortable with the decisions regarding comments, changes and this publication.

**** Call ends ****

[hugo]

Zakim, please excuse us

RRSAgent, please excuse us

[RRSAgent]

I see 4 open action items:

ACTION: Daniel to make mods to reqs document (what else is new?) [1]

recorded in http://www.w3.org/2002/08/01-ws-arch-irc#T19-51-12

ACTION: Mark B to repost his harvesting discussion [2]

recorded in http://www.w3.org/2002/08/01-ws-arch-irc#T20-09-17

ACTION: Daniel to post 4+1 model [3]

recorded in http://www.w3.org/2002/08/01-ws-arch-irc#T20-16-36

ACTION: Mike C to query members w/regard to submitting their own materials on WS-arch [4]

recorded in http://www.w3.org/2002/08/01-ws-arch-irc#T20-43-23