minutes from Sept 13 Teleconf

Minutes of the Conformance TC Teleconference

August 16, 2001

Attendees:

Lynne Rosenthal (lynne.rosenthal@nist.gov)

Lofton Henderson (lofton@rockynet.com

David Smiley (dsmiley@mercator.com)

David Marston (David_Marston@lotus.com) representing XSLT/XPath TC

Karl Best (karl.best@oasis-open.org)

Linda Kemp (Linda@ichnet.org

Kirill Gavrylyuk (kirillg@microsoft.com)

Future Meetings:

· Teleconf: tentatively Nov 1 at 2:00 (eastern)

· F2F – sometime week of 9 Dec. 2001, Orlando

1. House Keeping

- Welcome to all who participated on the teleconference.

- A quorum of voting members was present. David Smiley became a voting member at the conclusion of this teleconference. Welcome David.

- Approval of previous minutes (Aug 16 teleconf)

- Review and approval of Agenda

2. Schedule for approval of documents

Karl gave an overview of the process for documents – from Committee Specification to OASIS Standard. Details are online, under TC Process. Basically, the result of TC work is called a Committee Specification. If the TC wants to forward this to be an OASIS Standard, at least 3 members must certify that they use the specification. There were several comments as to what does ‘certify that they use the specification’ mean, especially in this case. It isn’t clear, but it seems that if 3 member organizations and/or TCs say that they have read and ‘used’ the specification then this requirement would be met.

The schedule is as follows: 1 month prior to a quarter, the document is frozen and sent to Karl. At the beginning of a quarter, OASIS membership has 90 days to review then a 30 day for a vote. The document is frozen during this time (i.e., no changes can be made to it).

The earliest we could have one of our documents be an OASIS Standard is May. Lynne would like to have the Conformance Requirements Document meet this schedule. Thus, it would need to be completed and voted by the TC in November.

3. Discussion of Conformance Requirements Document

The disposition of comments was discussed and all comments accepted.

Clause 3, Conformance will remain in the beginning of the document since it lets readers know what to expect and how it needs to be applied. A discussion regarding whether the various topics/issues are ‘shalls’ was discussed. It was decided that the issues in clause 7 shall be addressed. What did we mean by addressed? It was agreed that the overall objective is that the reader not be unsure as to what the document allows – that is not to have ambiguity about the document - the reader must not be left with questions regarding an issue/topic. It is left to the editor to capture this and write something.

Definitions for Normative and Informative will be added since these words can have conformance implications. Additionally we should mention that specification should identify which sections are normative vs. informative

Profiles. It was agreed that the appendix on profiles was helpful. Lofton briefly discussed the SVG experience in specifying and dealing with profiles. Basically, in the presence of profiles, what does conformance mean? Can one pick and choose functionality from various profiles? This can lead to fragmentation of implementations and interoperability. The editor will put some of the profile cautions into the appendix.

Section 7.6 International Character Codes

David Marston agreed to send some text for this section. He has sent the text and the editor will incorporate it.

4. Discussion of Test and Certification Framework White Paper

3 pictures were distributed as possible figures for the paper. It was agreed that this was the type of figures needed, although not necessarily these specific pictures.

Kirill asked it this document was applicable to ebXML or OASIS. It is applicable to OASIS in general and as such is also applicable to ebXML. Additionally clarification was given as to the purpose, objective, and scope of the document. The editor will remove some of the ebXML references (and possibly replace with OASIS) as well as clarify the objectives and scope.

5. Other Activities

The W3C QA Activity’s first meeting is in November. Its purpose is to improve the quality of W3C specifications and their implementations. Mark, Lynne and Lofton can act as liaisons since they will be participating in both groups. There seems to be a lot of synergy between the groups. The TC’s Conformance Document will be shared with the W3C QA.

Lynne summarized the work of the W3C RDF group in developing test cases and a test framework. Work on test frameworks are being done by various OASIS and W3C test subgroups, including OASIS XSLT/XPath TC and W3C DOM test subgroup. Dave M. expressed that at some point, a meeting of the monds about representing test case data and other aspects needs to happen. There needs to be consensus. This may be something our TC will want to look at in the future.

6. Next Teleconference tentatively scheduled for Nov 1 2001 at 2:00pm (eastern).

Meeting Adjourned at 3:15pm

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