Status of OSLC Automation and Actions

["Jim Amsden" <jamsden@us.ibm.com>]

Here's what I was able to discover from my notes
and looking at the open-services.net mail archives. Further information
can be found at:
     
          Actions
Notes
     
          Actions
Specification Strategy
     
          Automation
Specification Notes


Automation and Actions

Automation defines
extensions to the OSLC Actions 2.0 specification. Actions provide a means
of advertising actions (or operations) that can be performed on (or in
the context of) a specific resource. This relates to Automation in two
ways:
     
  1        Automation Requests
can be used as an interaction pattern by which actions can be executed
     
  2        Actions can provide
a way to aid management and the lifecycle of automation resources.

The Actions specification
reuses Automation resources to define an Automation Request interaction
pattern, which can be used to execute actions. Actions also defines a specification
profile that implementations can use, which provides interoperability based
on providers and consumers both using a common interaction pattern. This
specification extends the Actions specification by defining interaction
patterns which are useful in the management of automation resources.

Historical note: Actions
started off in Change Management as a way to change the state of a ChangeRequest.
Because Actions are applicable to other things, the open-services.net working
group decided to extract CM actions content out into a separate Actions
spec. Actions were also integrated Automation as described above. But Automation
ground to a halt and the Automation TC was abandoned. As a result, OSLC
Change Management 3.0 depended on Actions that didnât exist anymore.

Current Status

Automation
     
  â        Automation 2.1 was
promoted
to Finalization17 Feb, 2015.
     
  â        Automation specification
development moved
to OASIS in the
Automation TC
     
  â        However the Automation
TC lost its chair and failed to meet, and was eventually disbanded
     
  â        There are no know
implementations of Automation 2.1, but there are a number of client
and server implementations of Automation 2.0.
     
  â        Automation specification
2.1 was then adopted by oslc-domains TC and was migrated to OASIS ReSpec
by Koneksys.
     
  â        OSLC Configuration
Management Specification 1.0 shapes reference oslc_auto namespace and use
about 15 Automation properties, primarily for oslc_config:Activity for
providing information on the state of long running activities such as creating
a baseline.
     
  â        OSLC Configuration
Management 1.0 requires an extension to Automation 2.0 for an oslc_auto:progress
property. See this email.

Actions
     
  â        open-services.net
Actions
2.0 was promoted
to finalizationon 17 Feb, 2015, along with Automation 2.1.
 
      â        Actions
2.0 was moved
to OASIS OSLC Core TC. There has been no further work on this specification,
and it is not included in the OSLC Core 3.0 multi-part specification.
     
  â        An early version of
OSLC Configuration Management 1.0 did utilize actions to define operations
on configuration management resources. But this has been removed.
     
  â        The OSLC Change Management
3.0 specification did refer to a specific
actions profilefor describing how to change the state of a ChangeRequest, but this was
not included in the Change Management 3.0 Specification, CS02.
     
  â        An early version of
Actions (maybe 1.0?) is implemented in Rational Team Concert. But there
are no known implementations of Actions 2.0.




Jim Amsden, Senior Technical Staff Member
OSLC and Linked Lifecycle Data
919-525-6575