Minutes of Meeting on 15 September 2015

[kenb <kenb@ccs.neu.edu>]

Minutes for the CMIS4DAM TC Meeting on 15 September 2015

Attendees:

Ken Baclawski, Northeastern University
Ray Gauss II, Alfresco Software
Sascha Homeier, apollon GmbH+Co.KG
David Choy, Chair CMIS TC

Note that the meeting on 18 August 2015 did not reach quorum, so no 
minutes were published.

1. Discussion of CMIS4DAM Use Cases

a. Metadata access and integration Use Cases.

The main issue with this use case is support for hierarchical metadata, 
specifically to support querying XML data.  Querying JSON data might also 
be supported.

David Choy pointed out that there is a standard, called JCR, that supports 
hierarchical data.  Indeed, in JCR the repository is an object database 
tailored to storing, searching, and retrieving hierarchical data. 
However, JCR has largely failed as a standard for content management, 
because CM vendors use SQL as their underlying technology.  Currently, 
only a handful of CM vendors support JCR.

The discussion then proceeded to consider various possibilities for 
supporting hierarchical metadata.  SPARQL has a syntax that is the closes 
to SQL, but the data model is a network model, not a relational model.

Ultimately, the issue is not the query language but rather what operations 
will be performed.  In other words, where would it be used.

Padding conflicts with a requirement of CMIS, so that would not work.

Generalizing property names to allow for XPath expressions is another 
possibility that was also discussed.

Metadata can be very large if there is no limit on the depth, so this can 
pose a serious problem if it cannot be queried.

HTML is currently a valid type for a property value in CMIS.  The server 
is not expected to validate HTML.  The CMIS TC is open to adding XML has a 
valid type for a property value.  However, this could open up the 
possibility of a great diversity of schemas for the XML data.

It was agreed that it is a good issue for the joint meeting with the CMIS 
TC.

b. System-to-System Use Cases.

The CMIS protocol is client-server.  While this is not a system-to-system, 
it appears to be sufficient for this use case.  However, this remains to 
be resolved.

c. Application-to-System Use Cases.

The main new use case is asynchronous access.  David Choy agreed with 
this.  It was raised in the CMIS TC in the past and discussed briefly, but 
it was never resolved.  The pull form is the one that is currently under 
consideration and should be compatible with CMIS.  The push form is much 
more difficult because it requires a stateful service and callbacks.

d. Federated Systems Use Cases.

David Choy pointed out a CMIS is actually a virtual repository.  So it 
already has the capability for supporting federation.  However, there are 
issues that could be worth bringing up at the joint meeting with the CMIS 
TC.

2. Joint Meeting Information.

The connection and sign-in procedure for the joint meeting was briefly 
explained.


Respectfully submitted,

Ken Baclawski
Chair, CMIS4DAM TC