Groups - Search WS TC Call modified

[rden@loc.gov]

Minutes added. 

 -- Ray Denenberg


Search WS TC Call has been modified by Ray Denenberg

Date:  Thursday, 03 January 2008
Time:  09:00am - 10:00am ET

Event Description:
Toll-free number: 888-448-7101
International Dial-In: See http://www.intercall.com/sprintservices/SPCIntlAccessNumber.pdf

Participant code:7646073

Host: Ralph

Agenda:
1.	Role call.

2.	review draft core spec  revision http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/search-ws/download.php/26689/sws-core-12-28.doc

3.	Strategy: core spec, SRU1.2, SRU2.0, OpenSearch, etc.

4.	Possibility of a face-to-face meeting.

Minutes:
Attending: Larry, Ray, Ralph, Rob, Ashley, Matthew, Farrukh . Quorum

Note: Rob (Sanderson),  has been attending the last several calls, including this one, as a guest. He has now become an OASIS member (since this call), and has joined our committee officially.  Welcome, Rob!


In recent weeks the committee has stepped back from concrete specification and focused on an abstract model. One premise of the model is a description language to be developed, by which a server describes what it provides and how it is accessed.  Then:
1.	a pre-existing server (one that existed prior to development of the spec) need only provide a description; it need make no changes to the server itself in order to be accessible.
2.	A client will be able to access any server that provides a description file, if only it implements the capability to read and interpret the description file and formulate a request according to the description.

Another premise of the abstract model is that it is to be the foundation for concrete specifications, bindings. Basing these bindings on the abstract model will ensure that they are compatible with one another. 

Thus in the post-spec world, there will be pre-existing servers that the spec will address, and new servers conforming to one or more of the bindings we develop. Bindings will include: 
-	An SRU 1.2 binding
-	An  SRU 2.0 binding
-	An openSearch binding

The committee agrees that the specification representing the abstract model will be referred to as the  abstract protocol definition.  Bindings such as those listed above are protocol bindings. In addition the committee will develop auxiliary bindings, for example, for ATOM and/or RSS.   So the following work items are identified:

1.	abstract protocol definition
2.	description language 
3.	SRU 1.2 protocol binding 
4.	SRU 2.0 protocol binding 
5.	openSearch protocol binding 
6.	ATOM and/or RSS auxiliary binding

There is one school of thought (at least one committee members belief) that we should not be developing these application bindings, only the description language. This is a minority view, and those with that view may focus their efforts on the description language and need not work on the bindings. A significant portion of our work will be to develop the description language (so there is plenty of work there). But the fact remains, we are charted to develop a new versions of SRU and CQL, and a binding to opensearch.

There is debate over to what extent it is meaningful to profile openSearch. One view is that there is no such thing as an openSearch server: any server can be an openSearch server if it provides an openSearch description. An alternative view is that an openSearch server is one that has provided an openSearch description.  

Related is the issue of whether it is meaningful for a description specification to be a superset of the openSearch description specification. A semantic superset maybe, but trying to be a syntactic superset could be pointless, unless we have some degree of cooperation with the openSearch developers, because otherwise they can change the specification our from under us. We will continue our efforts to get those people to work with us. 

For further work on the description language, we need to look at the servers in the world  Google, etc.  to see what information needs to be represented.    Also look at the work that Ashley has done on this.

We need to begin looking critically at some of the popular search feature in the world and decide in each case whether it is sufficiently mainstream that it should be represented in the abstract protocol definition. Facets is an example.

The IETF work on URI templates is relevant to our work, particularly to the description language.  The current draft is at:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-gregorio-uritemplate-02

We began discussion of a possible face-to-face meeting, and there seems to be a consensus that it would be good to have one, perhaps in the next few months, but the discussion was very preliminary and no specific date or venue was suggested.

Next meeting: Thursday, January 17:
http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/search-ws/event.php?event_id=17238

This event is one in a list of recurring events.
Other event dates in this series:

Thursday, 20 December 2007, 09:00am to 10:00am ET
Thursday, 17 January 2008, 09:00am to 10:00am ET
Thursday, 31 January 2008, 09:00am to 10:00am ET
Thursday, 14 February 2008, 09:00am to 10:00am ET
Thursday, 28 February 2008, 09:00am to 10:00am ET
Thursday, 13 March 2008, 09:00am to 10:00am ET
Thursday, 27 March 2008, 09:00am to 10:00am ET
Thursday, 10 April 2008, 09:00am to 10:00am ET
Thursday, 24 April 2008, 09:00am to 10:00am ET
Thursday, 08 May 2008, 09:00am to 10:00am ET

View event details:
http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/search-ws/event.php?event_id=17237

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