How do the (last minute) changes made by OMG affect the
vote/decision already taken by our TC?
Do we need to vote again?
Someone could point out to OMG that OASIS doesn’t have a
specific process for adopting white papers either, but that didn’t stop us
getting out of the door in a timely manner.
14 September? So no-one is going to have this on their company
approved vacation reading lists...Pity
Peter
From: James Odell [mailto:email@jamesodell.com]
Sent: 01 July 2009 20:18
To: soa-rm-ra@lists.oasis-open.org RA
Subject: [soa-rm-ra] FW: Title for WP
Hi all,
There was no OMG vote in Costa Rica. Have forwarded the email of Jim
Amsden’s notes, below. The bottom line is that there can be no vote now
until the next OMG meeting (week of 14 September).
-Jim Odell
------ Forwarded Message
From: James Amsden <jamsden@us.ibm.com>
Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 13:07:17 -0400
To: James Odell <email@jamesodell.com>
Subject: Re: Title for WP
From my meeting notes:
SOA Joint Position Paper: OMG, OASIS and TOG
This presentation <http://www.omg.org/cgi-bin/doc?ad/2009-06-04>
summarized the work Heather Kreger and
others in the development of a paper <http://www.omg.org/cgi-bin/doc?ad/2009-06-03>
that positions various OMG, TOG and
OASIS SOA standards. generated a lot of conversation, but not necessarily the
intended/anticipated result. The paper covered the following main areas:
1. Positioning of Reference Models,
Ontologies, Reference Architectures and Modeling Languages,
2. A description of the current OMG,
OASIS and TOG standards around SOA,
3. Positioning of these standards in
relationship to each other
4. Areas of common agreement between
the standards
5. Guidance for potential consumers
of these standards in order to get the most out of them in support of SOA
initiatives
6. A statement of intent for future
collaboration to further support SOA adoption by minimizing fragmentation in
the SOA standards market place resulting from gaps and overlaps in standards
produced by these organizations
There are a number of facets to the discussion that need to be covered.
OMG Process: The OMG process is not very specific in dealing with white
papers similar to the one submitted in this meeting. The current Policies and
Procedures (P&P) don't address white papers, but apparently an older
version did have language about both white and green papers. The P&P
currently states the following concerning “discussion” papers:
This paper presents a discussion of technology issues considered in a
Special Interest Group of the Object Management Group. The contents of
this paper are presented to create discussion in the computer industry
on this topic; the contents of this paper are not to be considered an
adopted standard of any kind. This paper does not represent the
official position of the Object Management Group.
This raises a number of questions. Do SIGs vote to issue anything? Jim Odell
says they can vote on position papers, but everything else must be done through
a task force. Can a TF do the same things as a SIG? Yes, they can do anything a
SIG can do, as well as recommend adoption of specifications to the Architecture
Board. The Task Force can do what it likes, but all official OMG documents are
actually approved by the Architecture Board, Domain, and Platform Technical
Committees. If the TF did vote to issue a discussion paper, it would mean that
this is the position of the TF and could potentially effect future TF votes,
but would have no effect on OMG policies, position or standards.
OMG could use the recommendations in the white paper to evolve its Policies and
Procedures, but that is probably unnecessary as the they already cover liaisons
with other standards organizations and references to other related standards.
Document review comments: We got detailed review comments from Pete
Rivett (Adaptive) and Fred Cummins (HP). It was not clear that many other ADTF
members had read the paper yet. Pete and Fred had a lot of problems with the
paper, and they were quite different. However, what was common is that their
issues were about things that weren't actually in or implied by the paper! It
appears early copies of the paper, and calling it “SOA Harmonization” created
an impression and perspective that resulted in Pete and Fred addressing what
they wished SOA harmonization to be rather than the content and recommendations
in the paper. This was unfortunate, and was promoted by speculation from others
who hadn't read the paper but projected their own ideas about SOA harmonization
being about how the standards need to be changed to be aligned. Although this
may be a desirable eventual goal, it was not the purpose of this paper. Rather
this paper address how to make the best use of the standards that already
exist.
Late changes: There was a flurry of changes made to the paper from late
the week before the OMG meeting right up to the ADTF meeting, with an updated
draft being sent in email during the meeting. This left the ADTF members
wondering exactly what they might be voting on and an uneasy feeling that there
may have been a lot of late changes indicating lack of common agreement. This
was not actually the case. Most of the changes were editorial dealing with
organization logos, copyright notices, positioning of the attribution list,
whether it was a White Paper or just a paper, etc.
I tried to address all of these concerns in the ADTF presentation, in
particular by providing slides that described the non-goals as well as the
goals, a clearer positioning of standard types (RM, Ontology, RA and Modeling
Language), and a summary of the recommendations for using the standards. This
appeared to go over well. However, it was clear that the OMG community did not
have time to sufficiently review the final version of the paper, especially in
light of the clarifications in the presentation. And we needed time to decide
what to do with the paper. The conclusion was:
1. There would be no vote of any kind
in ADTF or the TCs this meeting.
2. We will propose an agenda item for
the SOA Consortium for the next OMG meeting at San Antonio in September
3. We will attempt to leverage the
potential collaboration between the standards organizations by getting get a
statement of support from the SOA Consortium for the standards positioning and
usage guidance in the paper, and some statement about leveraging existing
liaison relationships to foster further collaboration in support of successful
SOA community adoption
4. The ADTF will have a vote to
recommend issuance of the paper as an OMG discussion paper for the purpose of
stimulating additional discussion and influence on future standards activities
concerning SOA
5. We will then have a vote to adopt
the position paper in the AB, Domain and Platform TCs based on the
recommendation from the ADTF. This is because SOA crosses both the Domain and
Platform TCs, and the paper proposes collaboration that should be addressed by
the AB.
The effect of these adoptions will be only to indicate that the paper will be
introduced formally as a discussion paper for consideration by the various
effected task forces. It will simply raise the visibility of the paper, and its
recommendations for specification positioning and use, and for future
collaboration.
Jim Amsden, Senior Technical Staff Member
Rational Enterprise Architecture Management
919-461-3689
------ End of Forwarded Message