WSDM FAQ page

[Heather Kreger <kreger@us.ibm.com>]

Hi WebMaster, 
Can you please update the WDSM FAQ page
with the following information?: 

FAQ

Q: What does the OASIS Web Services Distributed Management
TC do?  

A: The OASIS WSDM TC is defining standards for the use
of web services within  a management system. These break down into
two (2) primary areas: using  web services to perform management functions
and the management of web  services themselves.

Thus, The OASIS Web Services Distributed Management TC
is defining two sets of specifications: Web Services Distributed Management:
Management Using Web Services (MUWS) and Web Services Distributed Management:
Management Of Web Services (MOWS) specifications. 

The first is for Management Using Web Services (often
abbreviated as MUWS), defining a web service interface for management providers.
This can be used to manage any manageable resource and any manager. WSDM
MUWS 1.0 defines how to represent and access the manageability interfaces
of resources as Web services. It is the foundation of enabling management
applications to be built using Web services and allows resources to be
managed by many managers with one set of instrumentation. This specification
provides interoperable, base manageability for monitoring and control managers
using Web services. WSDM MUWS 1.0 has been defined in two specifications,
MUWS Part 1, which defines the base architectural concepts and required
components, and MUWS Part 2 which defines standard composeable support
for manageability capabilities. 


The second is for Management Of Web Services (MOWS), defining
a specialization  for the case where the manageable resource is a
web service. Specifically, WSDM MOWS defines the manageability model for
managing Web services as a resource and how to describe and access that
manageability using MUWS. 

The WSDM TC expects that providers of management for resources
other than web services will provide analogous specializations their respective
manageable resources. 

The complete charter for this group can be found at http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/wsdm/charter.php

Q: Who will benefit from such a standard? 

A: WSDM benefits 3 communities: 
1. Providers of manageable resources: Resource providers
can use MUWS to expose the manageability of their resources regardless
of how they are instrumented. This preserves their investment in their
management instrumentation.  Because it is described and accessed
as a Web service, any management vendor can use the interface, reducing
the amount of custom support resources need to implement for each management
vendor their customers use. 
2. Providers of management software: As providers of resource
management software adopt these standards, management applications can
take advantage of the standard interface(s) to deliver  management
functionality to their users. This will increase the number of resources
that management software can access and over time reduce the cost of maintaining
support for resource provider specific instrumentation. 
3l Customers of multiple resource providers and multiple
management software providers: This will allow management software from
different vendors to interoperate more easily, enabling end to end and
even cross enterprise management.

Q: Who is involved?  

A: The WSDM TC enjoy representation from a broad range
of companies. This includes management companies, hardware device companies,
web service and application server providers, as well as customers of these
companies.

Q: Where can I find more detailed information? 
A: The committee home page is at: http://lists.oasis-open.org/committees/wsdm.
This contains pointers to the latest specifications. 
 
Q: How does this work compare with related efforts elsewhere?


A: The WSDM TC's work has been influence by the W3C Web
Service Architecture and Web Service Description working groups. 

The WSDM TC has been working to ensure that the needs
of the Global Grid Forum (GGF), Open Grid Services Architecture Working
Group are incorporated in the developing standard.

The WSDM TC has been involving other management standards
groups (e.g.  DMTF) to ensure that the models produced by these
groups can be represented using the WSDM standards.

Q: What other standards are involved? 

A: The MUWS and MOWS standards are based upon other work
ongoing within OASIS.  Most importantly, the WSDM TC has defined managed
resources as resources in a Web Services Resource Framework (WSRF) based
context. Thus, the WSDM specification will rely on the following OASIS
standards (some of which will be under development at the time WSDM 1.0
is produced).  WDSM 2.0 will depend on the Standard version of these
specifications. 
WS-Addressing
WS-ResourceFramework WS-ResourceProperties
WS-ResourceFramework WS-ResourceLifeCycle
WS-ResourceFramework WS-ServiceGroup
WS-Notifications Base Notification

Home Page
This TC's home page can be found here
 (http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=wsdm).
 Most of the links which follow can be found on that page.

Email
Email archives of this TC's work can be found here
 (http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/wsdm/).

Documents
The documents produced by the WSDM TC can be found in
the documents  section
(http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/documents.php?wg_abbrev=wsdm).

The current revisions of the documents are located on
the homepage and at 
http://docs.oasis-open.org/wsdm/2004/12/muws/cd-wsdm-muws-part1-1.0.pdf
http://docs.oasis-open.org/wsdm/2004/12/muws/cd-wsdm-muws-part2-1.0.pdf
http://docs.oasis-open.org/wsdm/2004/12/mows/cd-wsdm-mows-1.0.pdf

Schema and WSDL Files
Related XML Schemas and WSDL file can be found on the
homepage and generally at extensions of the URL:

http://docs.oasis-open.org/wsdm/2004/12/muws/wsdm-muws
 or http://docs.oasis-open.org/wsdm/2004/12/mows/wsdm-mows

Heather Kreger
STSM, Web Services Lead Architect for SWG Emerging Technologies
Author of "Java and JMX: Building Manageable Systems"
kreger@us.ibm.com
919-543-3211 (t/l 441)  cell:919-496-9572