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Table of Contents
The first meeting of the OASIS Registry and Repository Technical Committee was at the OASIS Technical Committee meeting in Chicago, on 15 November 1998, where interest was stated, a rough outline of the problem agreed upon, and the chairman, Terry Allen, elected. Discussion began in January 1999 with the distribution by the chairman of a preliminary briefing package, scenarios, business case, and other documents. These were revised in February 1999. Separately, Terry Allen was working on a DTD for ISO/IEC 11179 (for registry metadata) and distributed it to the e-mail discussion list regrep@oasis-open.org. The second meeting was held at the OASIS Technical Committee meeting in San Jose, on 8 March 1999. The third meeting was in Granada on 23 April 1999, where the OASIS Registry and Repository Technical Committee held a useful discussion on practical matters and reiterated general support for the project.
Around this time XML.org was formed as an initiative within OASIS, one of its aims being to construct and maintain a repository in accordance with the specifications of this Technical Committee.
An initial draft Technical Specification was published to the committee on 15 June (version 0.1); for convenience, it incorporated all work to date (except DTDs) and included much material that was later broken out into other documents. Version 0.1.5 of the same document appeared on 5 July. Later, this document was inadvertently placed in public view.
Several small teleconferences were held in early August 1999, chiefly to introduce the draft specfication to new committee members detailed by XML.org sponsors. Like the Granada meeting, these were useful, practical, and brought up new issues for consideration.
The fourth face-to-face meeting of the Technical Committee was held in Montreal on 12 August 1999, as part of the OASIS Summer Workshop. Again, new members were introduced to the project and the draft Technical Specification, and a wide-ranging discussion of practical and technical matters exposed yet more new issues. The next day, the XML.org Steering Committee affirmed its intentions with respect to the projected registry and repository, and urged an aggressive schedule for completion of the Technical Committee's specifications and the design of the XML.org project.
Version 0.2 of the Technical Specification, now limited to the registry, was published to the e-mail discussion list on 17 August along with other parts of the previous versions of the document (such as this historical account), which were broken out into other documents. On 9 September some of these documents were placed in public view.
The fith face-to-face meeting of the Technical Committee was held on 21 September 1999 at Documentum's offices in Pleasanton. Work was focussed on compiling functional requirements for XML.org to use in writing an RFP for repository software.
Conference calls continue, biweekly; some work has been handed off to XML.org, and our current emphasis is on completing the DTDs and workflow for submitting entities to a repository.
The sixth face-to-face meeting was held on 11 November 1999 in Santa Clara, and focussed on DTD review. As a result, the draft Technical Specification is to be revised before placing it in public view (this was done).
Subsequent face-to-face meetings in Philadelphia and San Jose focussed on issues arising from implementation, on workflow, and on understanding the ISO 11179 concepts used. As a result considerable changes are required to the specification, which should be available to the TC in revised form in early April.
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