Teleconf. Minutes - 19 July 2001

[Lynne Rosenthal <lynne.rosenthal@nist.gov>]

Minutes of the Conformance TC Teleconference
July 19 2001

Attendees:
Lynne Rosenthal
(lynne.rosenthal@nist.gov)
Mark Skall
(skall@nist.gov)
Todd Margo
(Todd_Margo@stercomm.com)
Karl Best
(karl.best@oasis-open.org)

Future Meetings:

·       

Teleconf:  
Aug 16, 2001 at 2:00 (eastern)

·       

Teleconf
or F2F:  Sept 13, 2001 at 2:00 (eastern)

·       

F2F 
sometime week of 9 Dec. 2001, Orlando

1. Voting membership
Current voting members are Lynne, Mark and Lofton Henderson.  A
quorum was present. 
Voting membership requires stating to the chair the intention to be a
voting member.  According to the OASIS procedures:

A prospective member of a TC shall become a voting member of the TC immediately following the close of the third TC meeting held during the period of prospective membership or after 60 days have elapsed following formal application to join the TC, whichever comes first.

Todd stated his intent to be a voting member.  Welcome
Todd

2.  Todd provided a brief summary of his company, Sterling 
Sterling Commerce is an integrator for electronic commerce
solutions.  They are interested in ebXML and have participated in
several ebXML WGs, including TRP, Reg/Rep and POC.   They plan
to be proactive in evangelizing ebXML to their customers.  

3.

      

Review
of past activities
Over the last year, Mark and Lynne participated in the ebXML Requirements
and Technical Architecture Committees, providing conformance guidance and
drafting conformance sections.  A white paper on Testing and
Certification
(http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ioc/documents/testing_and_certification_framework.pdf)
was distributed to this TC prior to submission to ebXML.  This white
paper, the ebXML Requirements and TA specs will be base documents for the
current work items (see below)

The TC was contacted by the OASIS SAML TC.  SAML members found the
Testing and Certification white paper and used it in developing
conformance documents for SAML.  Mark and Lynne provided assistance
to SAML’s conformance subgroup. 

The TC participated in a joint workshop between W3C, OASIS, and NIST on
Quality Assurance (QA).  Its objectives are similar to the
objectives of this committee  that is to provide guidance and
information related to improving the development, use, and implementation
of specifications.    TC plans to continue its
participation with W3C in a newly formed QA Activity.  

Outreach:  The TC will continue to participate (as appropriate) with
other TCs as well as with external organizations (e.g., W3C QA Activity)
to promote and assistance in areas of conformance.

4.

      

Revised
Charter and Name Change
Revised Charter and Name Change approved: (by 2/3 voting 
membership)
The TC’s name was shortened to Conformance (formally Interoperability and
Conformance).  The rationale was to minimize confusion with other
newly formed TCs and to provide focus  that is, on
conformance.   Similarly, the charter was revised. The charter
is available at: 
 (http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/conformance/200107/msg00002.html)

5.

      

Current
Work Items
The initial deliverables are to develop conformance requirements and a
testing plan (conformance regime).  The focus will initially be on
ebXML although it is believed that what is done for ebXML can be made
general (if not already) and be applicable to any OASIS specification and
TC.  The rationale for starting with ebXML is that work had already
been started in the OASIS-UN/CEFACT effort and that a lot of information
and interest already exists.   

Deliverable:  Conformance Requirements Guideline, using the ebXML
Requirements and TA documents as base documents.  

Deliverable:  Testing and Certification Plan (aka Conformance
Regime?), using the Testing and Certification Framework white paper as a
base document.   The objective is to have general guidelines
(template?) and have specific examples (can we get examples from TCs
plans/efforts). 

These deliverables must be coordinated with the other ebXML TCs (within
OASIS and UN/CEFACT).   An invitation to the various TCs will
be extended, soliciting their interests and inviting them to participate
in the Aug 16 teleconf.  

There is much interest in testing and certification.  Todd stated
that they are seeing brief, vague statements in RFPs regarding
conformance.  The Drummond Group has begun interoperability testing
for messaging software.  There is also confusion between the new IIC
TC and this TC.  Karl, who will be calling into the IIC, will
mention the work of this TC.  

6.

      

New
Members 
Karl had several suggestions for trying to attract new members to the
Conformance TC, including a brief message to all OASIS members and input
into the OASIS newsletter. The TC chair will send email to the ebXML TCs
as well as the other OASIS TCs inviting them and/or their members to
participate in the conformance TC. 


Meeting was adjourned at 3:00 pm.