XDI TC Notes

Following are the notes of the unofficial telecon of the XDI TC held on:

Date: Monday, 16 November 2015 USA
Time: 10:00AM - 11:30AM Pacific Time (17:00-18:30 UTC)

The TC operates under a standing rule approved 17 July 2008 under which the TC does not hold regular official meetings and conducts all business by electronic ballot only. Unofficial weekly meetings are held to enable discussion among members but no business is conducted nor actions taken.

ATTENDING

Peter Davis
Markus Sabadello
Drummond Reed
Joseph Boyle

REGRETS

Christopher Allen
Lionel Wolberger
Les Chasen

GUESTS

Chet Ensign

Publishing XDI Core 1.0 Committee Specification Draft 01

Chet Ensign joined the call to talk us through the steps to publish the new spec. He pointed us to:

https://www.oasis-open.org/resources/tc-admin-requests/committee-specification-draft-creation-upload-request

RE our questions about Docbook, he said that we should send the questions to docbook-comment@lists.oasis-open.org after first subscribing by sending a blank email to docbook-comment-subscribe@lists.oasis-open.org.

Peter mentioned that there was a PDF toolchain for DocBook - it the Git repository we have been using.

# ACTION ITEM: DRUMMOND to submit the spec via the form.

# ACTION ITEM: JOSEPH to submit the questions to the DocBook list.

Shared Variables and Registrar Link Contracts

In proposed link contracts by a registry to a registrar, we need to decide how XDI variables can be shared. See:

https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/document.php?document_id=56879&wg_abbrev=xdi

Markus also posted a message about this topic—specifically on $digit variables—to the TC mailing list:

https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/xdi/201511/msg00005.html

Markus suggested we could just use $1, $2, $3, etc numbers as variables, e.g. do something like this for a registrar link contract:

(+!:uuid:0000/+!:uuid:8888)#registrar$do/$set/{|$1|}

(+!:uuid:0000/+!:uuid:8888)#registrar$do/$del/{|$1|}

(+!:uuid:0000/+!:uuid:8888)(#registrar$do$if$and/$true){$from}/$is/+!:uuid:8888

(+!:uuid:0000/+!:uuid:8888)(#registrar$do$if$and/$true){$msg}<$sig><$valid>/&/true

(+!:uuid:0000/+!:uuid:8888)(#registrar$do$if$and/$true){|$1|}/#registrar/+!:uuid:8888

Or maybe a little bit more precise would be:

(+!:uuid:0000/+!:uuid:8888)#registrar$do/$set/{|$1|}

(+!:uuid:0000/+!:uuid:8888)#registrar$do/$del/{|$2|}

(+!:uuid:0000/+!:uuid:8888)(#registrar$do$if$and/$true){$from}/$is/+!:uuid:8888

(+!:uuid:0000/+!:uuid:8888)(#registrar$do$if$and/$true){$msg}<$sig><$valid>/&/true

(+!:uuid:0000/+!:uuid:8888)(#registrar$do$if$and$or/$true){|$1|}/#registrar/+!:uuid:8888

(+!:uuid:0000/+!:uuid:8888)(#registrar$do$if$and$or/$true){|$2|}/#registrar/+!:uuid:8888

The rule is that {|$1|} must match exactly the same arc(s) every time it is used, same for {|$2|}.

Drummond asked whether these $digit variables needed to be defined variables in this particular example, since no definition is actually needed, just matching across multiple statements. Our conclusion was that the semantics of a $digit variable do not depend on it being a definition.

Drummond noted that this specific definition of $digit variables should be added to XDI Core 1.0 Committee Specification Draft 02.

# CONCENSUS on the above.

Markus demonstrated the current status of support for variables in the XDI2 implementation, e.g. see this simulation of a registry/registrar link contract:

https://server.xdi2.org/XDILocalMessenger?category=2&sample=5

(make sure to turn on “LinkContractInterceptor” when trying it)

This led to a discussion about how frequently changes should be make to XDI Core 1.0 as we realize changes are necessary. Peter suggested that we don’t want to be making changes to Core very frequently. Our general thought was that the right cadence shouldn’t be more frequent than quarterly.

# ACTION ITEM: DRUMMOND to publish a TC wiki page on planned changes to Core, divided into normative and non-normative, as well as making discrete JIRA tickets for each one.

NEXT REGULAR CALL

The next call will be the following week at the usual time (Monday 10AM PT). The link to where agenda items can be posted for the next meeting is: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19oDl0lbb56Grehx2a5flZnhrgnua5l8cVvC_dJ8fTXk/edit?usp=sharing