Minutes: XDI TC Telecon Friday 2015-01-09

[Markus Sabadello <markus.sabadello@xdi.org>]

XDI TC Minutes

Following are the minutes of the unofficial telecon of the XDI TC at:

Date:  Friday, 9 January 2015 USA
Time:  09:00AM - 10:30AM Pacific Time (16:00-17:30 UTC)

ATTENDING

Drummond Reed
Les Chasen
Markus Sabadello

GUESTS

REGRETS

Phil Windley
Amanda Navarro

NEWS & UPDATES

PRESENTATIONS/DISCUSSIONS

Report from XDI editors subcommittee

https://wiki.oasis-open.org/xdi/XdiOneSpecs
https://github.com/OASIS-XDI-Technical-Committee/xdi-spec-docbook

No call took place today.

XDI/RDF

We did not further discuss this topic.

Variables

We talked about Drummond’s work on “simple” and “complex” variables, and we further expanded this page:

https://wiki.oasis-open.org/xdi/XdiVariables

We then compared the proposed variable syntax with Markus’ list of use cases for variables:

https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/document.php?document_id=54770&wg_abbrev=xdi

We felt that XDI variables can be used in similar ways as regular expressions or XPath, i.e. to match XDI addresses against patterns.

Markus felt that with the proposed syntax on the XdiVariables wiki page, all his uses cases can be satisfied.

Also see Drummond’s and Joseph’s recent work on the GraphModelStructure wiki page and the tree view of node types:

https://wiki.oasis-open.org/xdi/GraphModelStructure

Also see the 2014-12-19 XDI TC minutes and action items:

https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/xdi/201412/msg00013.html

XDI Policy and Connections

In the discussion about variables, we discussed instantiating a new link contract. Markus said several people had suggested that using the typed variable {$do} was not intuitive, since the operation itself is not a variable. So we discussed other options for the name of the special operation for instantiating a new link contract, since that is the bootstrap authorization operation. The options we considered were:

• $connect

• $new

The preference of those on the call was $new.

A second key point that came up out of the discussion was that the human term “link contract” is represented in XDI by the $do keyword, and that can be confusing to newcomers to XDI because in English “do” is a verb and “link contract” is a noun. Drummond pointed out that in English, the word “contract” is both a verb and a noun.

Example connect request flow using $do:

TEMPLATE AUTHORITY (TA):    +respect  [+]!:uuid:0000

REQUESTING AUTHORITY (RA):  =alice    [=]!:uuid:1111

AUTHORIZING AUTHORITY (AA): =bob      [=]!:uuid:2222

in +respect graph, we have the forever link contract template:

[+]!:uuid:0000#forever{$do}/$get/{$to}{$card}

connect request sent from =alice to =bob

[=]!:uuid:1111[$msg]!:uuid:1234/$is()/([=]!:uuid:2222)

[=]!:uuid:1111[$msg]!:uuid:1234$do/$new/[+]!:uuid:0000#forever{$do}

link contract instance in =bob's graph after connect request is processed:

([=]!:uuid:2222/[=]!:uuid:1111)[+]!:uuid:0000#forever$do/$get/[=]!:uuid:2222[$card]!:uuid:5678

sample message from =alice to =bob using the new link contract instance to retrieve a card

[=]!:uuid:1111[$msg]!:uuid:1234/$is()/([=]!:uuid:2222)

[=]!:uuid:1111[$msg]!:uuid:1234/$do/([=]!:uuid:2222/[=]!:uuid:1111)[+]!:uuid:0000#forever$do

[=]!:uuid:1111[$msg]!:uuid:1234$do/$get/[=]!:uuid:2222[$card]!:uuid:5678

Same example connect request flow using $linkcontract:

TEMPLATE AUTHORITY (TA):    +respect  [+]!:uuid:0000

REQUESTING AUTHORITY (RA):  =alice    [=]!:uuid:1111

AUTHORIZING AUTHORITY (AA): =bob      [=]!:uuid:2222

in +respect graph, we have the forever link contract template:

[+]!:uuid:0000#forever{$linkcontract}/$get/{$to}{$card}

connect request sent from =alice to =bob

[=]!:uuid:1111[$msg]!:uuid:1234/$is()/([=]!:uuid:2222)

[=]!:uuid:1111[$msg]!:uuid:1234$linkcontract/$new/[+]!:uuid:0000#forever{$linkcontract}

link contract instance in =bob's graph after connect request is processed:

([=]!:uuid:2222/[=]!:uuid:1111)[+]!:uuid:0000#forever$linkcontract/$get/[=]!:uuid:2222[$card]!:uuid:5678

sample message from =alice to =bob using the new link contract instance to retrieve a card

[=]!:uuid:1111[$msg]!:uuid:1234/$is()/([=]!:uuid:2222)

[=]!:uuid:1111[$msg]!:uuid:1234/$linkcontract/([=]!:uuid:2222/[=]!:uuid:1111)[+]!:uuid:0000#forever$linkcontract

[=]!:uuid:1111[$msg]!:uuid:1234$linkcontract/$get/[=]!:uuid:2222[$card]!:uuid:5678

Transactional integrity

We did not further discuss this topic.

NEXT CALL

The next call is next week at the regular time.