[ebxml-iic] July 1 Meeting minutes

[Jacques Durand <JDurand@fsw.fujitsu.com>]

Title: July 1 Meeting minutes

All:

1. Here are the minutes for this morning meeting.

2. We need someone to host the next call (July 15th)

3. For those who have not yet subscribed to new sublists,
please do so (see in the minutes, or on our site).
Some thread already initiated on ebxml-iic-conform.

Regards,

Jacques

 

Minutes of IIC telecon July 1st, 2002
---------------------------------------------------
 
Call:
-----

Host: Fujitsu 
Time: July 1st, 10 am PDT (1 hour) 
Toll free number: 1-877-801-2058 
International Number:1-712-257-6652 

Present:
--------

Mike Kass (NIST)
Jaques Durand (Fujitsu)
Monica Martin (Drake Certivo)
Pete Wenzel (SeeBeyond)
Eric Van Lydegraf (Kinzan)
Matt McKenzie (XMLG)
Michael Wang (TIBCO)
Hatem El-Sebaaly (IPNet)

Guests:
Cliff Collins (Sybase)
Bolivar Pereira (EAN)


Agenda:
-------

  1. Logistic issues: 
  - mailing sublists, 
  - next f-2-f. 
  2. Status of work MS conformance: 
  - status of our Test Requirements list for submission to MS TC. 
  - status of mark-ups for Test cases. 
  3. Status of work MS Interoperability 
  - DGI tests integration 
  - Test Case representation within the test framework. 
  4. Implementation & Deployment Guidelines, 
  - current status of doc 
  - Deployment template task force, with EAN 
  5. Other target specifications (RegRep, BPSS, CPPA) 
  - requirements for the Test Framework (see current doc posted) 


Minutes:
--------

1- Logistic issues.

- New lists are in use from now on (see our Web site):
|_ ebxml-iic-framework (conformance and interop framework, for all specs) 
|_ ebxml-iic-conform (conformance specific discussion, for all specs) 
|_ ebxml-iic-interop (interoperability specific discussion, for all specs) 
|_ ebxml-iic-comments (venue for test requirement comments to be sent in a more formal way) 
Old ones are still there for a while, but should not be used anymore.

- Next f-2-f: sometime second half of August. we have four options:
(a) Vancouver, hosted by XMLGlobal (would be maybe August 22-23, to not overlap 
with Boston XML, unless no-one plans to attend this.)
(b) Boston, hosted by OASIS, joined with XML Web Services One conference (August 26-30),
(c) Bay Area.
(d) Detroit, Aug 13th-14th combined with OAG meeting.
The main objective is final review of MS test material, and also
Test Framework, before submission to OASIS (September 1st).

ActionItem: Jacques will issue a poll email, asking everyone their preferences.


2. Status of work MS conformance: 

- (Mike, Matt) Released the latest version of Level 1 & 2 of Test Requirements.
Following remarks have been made and modifications are suggested:
(1) Levels 1, 2 and 3 do not really map to the spec partition "core" vs. 
"additional" (=optional) feature modules. E.g Level 2 contains both 
Reliable Messaging (and "Additional" feature)and Security ("core"). 
Even though this is not a problem in itself, that may raise questions 
(e.g. what levels need be passed, as a minimum) and this also presumes 
conformance levels that we may not want to define at the same time we do Test Reqs,
i.e. don't want the *definition* of Test Reqs to be tied to such profiles/levels.
(and we do not need to communicate the details of conf levels to
the spec owners, except the level for the core requirements.)
(2) the "specification coverage". By spec coverage, we mean the degree to which 
our tests adress the conformance to the specification requirements, 
for each feature of the spec.
- About (1): There seems to be consensus that we want to define several "profiles" 
of conformance. There will be the "core" conf profile, that should be included in 
every other profile. The "additional" features may need to be broken down into more 
than one new profile.

ActionItem: Matt will propose a way to separate (a) Test Req definitions, which
should belong to a single "master" file (while still being organized overall
by spec modules?), (b) Profile definitions, which a re just sets of references
to items of the Test Reqs file. This allows more flexible profile definitions:
same test req item may belong to several profiles, new profiles can be added later, etc.

ActionItem: Monica and others will give a shot at breaking the "additional" features
into two or more profiles, as we may not want to propose an all or nothing conformance
for these.

ActionItem:(about (2)): Jacques will clarify how we can specify better the test coverage.
In case we agree on this, we need to update our delivery to MS TC consequently.

- Test Case mark-up: Mike believes at this point we should first describe in an
abstract / informal way the Test Cases that implement each Test Req.
Only then would we be capable of finalizing the XML mark-up for describing all of these
(for each test case: test steps + test data/config material)
Jacques had started in fact to do this informal description for 2 or 3 Test Cases 
based on the latest version of the Test Framework (see draft published on our site)
(the harness for MS conformance is: 
Test Service with predefined Actions + Test Driver on the wire).

ActionItem: Mike, Matt & Jacques will work on defining more Test Cases "informally"
but precisely, i.e. describe steps and test material, without mark-up yet.
Now that (1) the Test Reqs are finalized, (2) the Test Framework components - or at least
the MS conformance test harness - are defined, we should be able to derive Test Cases
without much problems. 


3. Status of work MS Interoperability: 
The team was not on the call, but Steve has iterated on the Interop test suite draft.
The mapping to DGI tests need be addressed more explicitly (possibly in Appendix?)


ActionItem: Hatem El-Sebaaly will help review how we mapped DGI tests into
our test suite.


4. Implementation & Deployment Guidelines:
 
(note: Due to lack of time, we only covered the "deployment template"
initiative, not the full impl. guidelines work.)
Pete, Monica and on the EAN side, Bolivar, Tom, are working on a 
deployment template doc. The template will allow for defining additional
business-level requirements (in addition to standard reqs.)
These will go beyond "content" requirements (e.g. header fields values),
and also provide usage profiles (e.g. what Security option should be used, etc.)
 
In a first phase, this document will be in plain English, and in tabular form.
(no XML mark-up defined for it yet). It should be possible to capture most
of the content of EAN TRP guidelines, as an instance of such a table.
The template table will report: 
(a) the business-specific requirements, 
(b) the rationale behind each of them, 
(c) what does this imply (impact) in terms of usage/operations/constraints.
Tom Bikeev ( Bikeev@ean-int.org ) is the EAN technical contact for this.
A draft would be available by end of the week.


5. Other target specifications (RegRep, BPSS, CPPA).

- Mike is following what is happening on the RegRep side: 
Lynn G. from NIST (in RegRep TC) has drafted a list of test requirements for RegRep,
addressing mostly configuration aspect: how to populate the rep, set-up procedures.
It is a skeletal document.
Mostly narrative format, no XML mark-up introduced for this.
Mike will make sure our Test Req mark-up / schema for test Reqs will fit-in.
There are some levels defined, but mostly around what's mandatory, and what's optional.



Reminders:
---------

- Next teleconference planned for Monday, July 15th, 10am Pacific time.
We need a volunteer to host...
- you have to give your preference for the next f-2-f.
Please put "F2F" (or RE:F2F) in the mail subject.
(for each option, tell: impossible/possible, and order of preference (1,2,3,4)
(a) Vancouver (host: XMLGlobal), Aug 22-23.
(b) Boston (host: OASIS, joint with XML WebServices One), somewhere between Aug 26-30
(c) San Jose (host: possibly Fujitsu), Aug 22-23.
 


Jacques Durand
ebXML IIC chair