Registry status for today's ccall

[Karl Best <karl.best@oasis-open.org>]

ACXO members:

Here's a quick status of the Registry for discussion during today's ccall.

- The Registry has been live for about six weeks. There are ~75 registered
submitters, and 10 submissions. Possible reasons for the low number of
submissions are 1) lack of marketing, and 2) bugs that prevent people from
submitting.

- The server has been down a couple times over the past few weeks, both
times caused by hardware failure. A motherboard has been replaced. As result
of these crashes we have learned two things: 1) the hardware (the loaner
E250) is not covered by warranty, and 2) iStructure has not yet received
complete documentation that they need in order to properly maintain the
server, nor are they as capable of providing the level of Documentum support
that was first claimed.

================
Here's a more complete list of things we need:

- I believe that we need a product manager for the Registry. I am the
Registry Admin, whose job it is to approve submissions. But I have also been
acting, by default, as the product manager who takes care of system
problems, relationship with the ISP, further development plans, etc. I am
finding this second role difficult because 1) I don't have the technical
knowledge of how the syetm works, 2) I have no technical resources with
which to handle bugs etc, and 3) I have a full time job on the side.

- We need a plan or decision on further support/maintenance, and development
of the Registry. This needs to be managed by the product manager. Documentum
engineers have provided some limited amount of help since the handoff, but
it was made clear to OASIS before the handoff that once the system was
completed that OASIS would own it and be responsible for its maintenance.
Because of this OASIS signed a contract with iStructure, who was recommended
to us by Documentum as the best company to host the Registry server and who
could provide Documentum application support and maintenance. As we have no
technical resources in house, we expected that they could handle all of the
technical issues for us. But so far they have not shown that they are
capable of providing this; they have required Documentum's help to get the
server running again after crashes. This is from a combination of lack of
system documentation as well as their lack of ability. We are paying
$7800/month to iStructure for these services. Other ISPs can provide
identical hosting services for $2500/month, so essentially we are paying
$5000+/month for the Documentum support which they have so far not been
providing. As bug fixing and further development is required for the
Registry, I propose that we move the server from iStructure to an ISP, and
use the $5000/month savings to hire a third party developer to provide
support services as well as further development.

- In my opinion the Registry is not yet at v1.0. There are still bugs that
haven't been fixed, and there is not yet system documentation. There are
also quite a number of things that need to be done for a v1.1 that would
make things easier for submitters, users, and the admin.

- Last week a security hole was found in the system by Joe Alfonso @
DataChannel. By erasing part of the URL a user could access screens where
new submitters are created, screens which an Admin requires a password to
access. Una asked me if Documentum could work on the system over the
weekend, which I okayed, but I haven't seen the server running again.

- I still need, as admin, policies from the ACXO describing how the Registry
should be run. For example, what types of files should we admit? (The
decision on this shortly before launch was software based, i.e. what file
types could the system accept, not what types *should* we accept.) What
level of validation should be run on the submissions? Who can submit? (e.g.
do we want people with yahoo or hotmail addresses submitting files?)


==============
Here's even more detail:

Immediate needs:
-------------------
- iStructure needs the following informmation immedaitely so that they can
support the server:
	- documentation from Documentum on the application configuration
	- network schema of how www.xml.org/registry integrates with www.xml.org,
and a network diagram
	- contact names for the DNS server
	- maintenance contracts for
		- Sun hardware
		- iPlanet software
			- web server
			- LDAP server
		- Oracle software
		- Docummentum software
		- other?

- Various bugs in the submission process need to be fixed
	- cannot submit using Netscape or any other browser except IE
	- various error messages when trying to submit (I have these in a mail
folder)
	- the admin is not notified when new submissions are in the queue
	- the admin is unable to reject submitters

- The security hole needs to be fixed.

Short term needs:
---------------------
- Nagwa informs me that the E450, which was originally supposed to be the
Registry server but was dropped, will soon be repaired and available again.
This means that the Registry must be loaded onto a new server and the E450
and E250 swapped out. This will result in some down time. I don't know who
will do the work of installing the Registry system on the E450; I suspect
that the ASP should be able to do the physical box swap.

Longer term needs:
-----------------------
- v1.1 further development
	- better search capabilities e.g. grouping, etc
	- new admin tools
		- edit submmitter/submission metadata or delete submitter/submission after
approval
		- send submission back to submitter (demote) before approval
		- reports/lists of submitter or submission metadata
		- traffic reports
		- change admin password
	- more intuitive submission process for users



</karl>
============================================================
Karl F. Best
OASIS
Director, Technical Operations
978.667.5115 x206
karl.best@oasis-open.org
http://www.oasis-open.org