[provision] Possible final draft of charter

[Darran Rolls <Darran.Rolls@waveset.com>]

The purpose of the OASIS Provisioning Services Technical Committee
(PSTC) is to define an XML-based framework for exchanging information
between Provisioning Service Points. This framework will be referred to
as the Service Provisioning Markup Language (SPML).

The Technical Committee will develop an open specification addressing
the required semantics for provisioning Service Points to exchange
requests relating to managed Provisioning Service Targets.  SPML
requests will facilitate the creation, modification, activation,
suspension, enablement and deletion of data on managed Provisioning
Service Targets. 

The finished specification is expected to include (but is not limited
to) core XML schemas for the following:

1) Query and exchange of available Provisioning Service Targets
2) Query and exchange of available Provisioning Service Target
attributes and options
3) Query and exchange of available Provisioning Service Targets instance
identities
4) Query and exchange of Provisioning Service Targets hierarchies
5) Request and response for specific provisioning requests 

The specification is expected to facilitate (but is not limited to) the
following SPML exchanges:

1) Exchange of provisioning requests between Provisioning Service Points
within a single organization
2) Exchange of provisioning requests between Provisioning Service Points
hosted by 3rd party providers, aggregators and ASPs
3) Exchange of provisioning requests between Provisioning Service Points
with support for chained or forwarded requests
 
SPML will assume a pre-existing trust model between participating
Provisioning Service Points and will utilize available security
mechanisms for encryption and message integrity. The SPML specification
will be developed with consideration of the following existing
specifications (which are of public knowledge -- accessible and freely
distributed): Active Digital Profile (ADPr), eXtensible Resource
Provisioning Management (XRPM), and Information Technology Markup
Language (ITML).

SPML does not address the needs of end-to-end service definition in the
context of order entry/order management and service delivery.  It is
however envisioned that future efforts will employ SPML requests in a
wider "service expression and delivery" syntax targeted at the
end-to-end problem.

The goal of the Technical Committee (subject to revision) is to submit a
Specification (including Use Cases & Requirements, Information Model,
Protocols, Bindings, and Conformance) to the OASIS Membership for its
approval by September 2002. 


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Darran Rolls                      http://www.waveset.com
Waveset Technologies Inc          drolls@waveset.com 
(512) 657 8360                    PGP  0x8AC67C6F   
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