ebXML IIC conference call -- meeting minutes

[Philippe DeSmedt <PDeSmedt@viquity.com>]

All,

Here are the minutes of last Monday's (08/06) conference call of the ebXML
IIC Technical Committee. Thanks to David Fischer of Drummond Group and Brian
Hayes of Commerce One for submitting their notes to me for inclusion.

Call was hosted by Cisco.

1. Call to order at 9AM PDT and brief intro (Philippe);
2. Present (in no particular order, and with apologies to those I have
inadvertently missed -- or added):
Engkee Kwang (Vitria), Sanjay Cherian (Sterling Commerce), John Evdemon
(Vitria), Lynne Rosenthal (NIST), Mark Skall (NIST), Karl Best (OASIS),
Iwasa (Fujitsu), Anders Tell (Open Source), Matt Mulligan (GXS), Pallavi
Malu (Intel), Steven Yung (Sun), Nakao (NTT America), Jeff Turpin (Cyclone
Commerce), Brian Hayes (Commerce One), David Smiley (Mercator), David
Fischer (Drummond Group), Greg Giles (Cisco), Krishna Sankar (Cisco), Bill
Cox (BEA), Sanjay Patil (Iona), Bala Yanamandra (webMethods), Yoshi Russell
(Vitria), Michael Gordon (Sybase/Neonsoft), Michael Wang (TIBCO), Jeff Eck
(GXS), Kumar Sivaraman (SeeBeyond), Jacques Durand (Savvion), Himagiri
Mukkamala (Sybase), Philippe De Smedt (Viquity);
3. OASIS rules: people present on this call, who had made their intention to
participate known to the chair at least 15 days prior to the meeting, and
who are members of OASIS, are voting members of the technical committee; all
others need to wait 3 meetings or 60 days (whichever is earlier) in order to
vote; all OASIS members are welcome to attend the meetings (subject to
approval by the chair), but ability to vote is per the rule stated above;
4. Welcome to OASIS (Karl Best): Karl went over the membership requirements,
IPR rules (all work done under this IC is IP of OASIS; any work which is
otherwise copyrighted should be so noted -- please refer to full IPR policy
on OASIS web site); current TC charter is in effect until amended by vote
(only minor changes are allowed without having to get OASIS board approval);
5. Brief history of ebXML PoC/IIC team: first effort was at Brussels ebXML
meeting, with focus on ebXML messaging and some business process (BP); San
Jose meeting expanded demo to 6 participants, focused on messaging; Tokyo
meeting focused on messaging, CPP/A, registry and repository, business
process; ebXML press event at San Francisco in December; 30+participants at
Vienna ebXML conference, focusing on all areas of ebXML; ebXML IIC team is
outgrowth of ebXML PoC team as per agreement between UN/CEFACT and OASIS on
continuation of ebXML effort; also a couple of demos at other events (e.g.
XML One in London), representing hightened focus on PR/marketing angles in
addition to validating technical specifications;
6. Overview of existing OASIS Conformance TC by Lynne Rosenthal and Mark
Skall of NIST; very informative discussion on how the two TC's can leverage
each other: Conformance TC focus is on conformance methodologies, guidance,
white papers, plans, conformance issues, etc., i.e., they provide assistance
to other conformance teams, such as the ebXML IIC TC at the 'meta' level;
they possess the experience and expertise to tell us what works and what
doesn't, how conformance/interoperability testing is done correctly, etc.;
they do not participate in the construction of test suites themselves --
that's our job; the Conformance TC has been in existence for 2 years; an
important point that was made, is that conformance is a necessary, though
not sufficient condition for interoperability (which could still fail even
if participants are conformant to the specs); issues that will come up
include, e.g., whether conformance will apply to ebXML as a whole, or
whether it can be applied to individual pieces (e.g. messaging); the
Conformance TC expects to learn a lot from our experience, so the potential
synergy is very high; 
7. Sanjay Patil of Netfish gave a brief update on the work of the ebXML
Registry/Repository TC -- they've met 5 times, and are gathering information
for the next version of the spec; there has been no talk yet in that TC on
conformance/interoperability testing, but all TC's are encouraged to start
looking into that; the ebXML IIC TC will have liaisons to each of the
technical teams to make sure the proper seeds are planted;
8. There was some discussion on the activities of the Drummond Group (please
refer to the appropriate press releases), e.g. under contract with the
Global Commerce Initiative; Jeff Eck of GXS (and others) have raised
concerns about fees, whether participants in previous PoC will be
'grandfathered', etc. David Fischer of the Drummond group gave a brief
update, stating that the fees would cover cost only, but further discussion
on this topic will take place at the face-to-face in San Jose on August 14;
9. It was noted that there are currently two ebXML-related demos in the
pipeline: one at AIAG (Automotive Industry Action Group) in Detroit, and one
at CompTIA in London (please refer to my earlier e-mails); no detailed
updates were available;
10. Schedule of meetings: there will be a conference call every second
Monday of the month, starting on September 10 (hosted by GXS -- thanks,
Jeff) and the next one on October 8 (host TBD); there will be 3 face-to-face
meetings per year, starting on August 14 in San Jose (see earlier
announcements); as more demo opportunities are identified, there may be more
face-to-face meetings specifically focused on  that activity;
11. The meeting agenda for San Jose will be sent out later (including
dial-in number), but will definitely include the following topics: structure
of TC (i.e., officers (e.g. vice-chair), liaisons to other TC's or standards
bodies, etc.); request for volunteers for officers and liaisons, subteams,
etc.; activities of Drummond Group; and how to get started on the actual
technical work that our committee is chartered to do.


Agenda for face-to-face to follow.

-Philippe
_______________________________
Philippe De Smedt
Viquity Corporation (www.viquity.com)
1161 N. Fair Oaks Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089-2102
(408) 548-9722
(408) 747-5586 (fax)
pdesmedt@viquity.com