ECDTF/ISIG/CSCW WG/Agent WG/Brokerage WG Meeting Minutes – Tokyo, Japan

ec/99-05-07

Chairs: Greg Mack (Booz, Allen & Hamilton, Inc.),

John Propper (NetVendor Systems, Inc, http://www.netvendor.com ),

Shridhar Rangarajan (EC Cubed, http://www.eccubed.com)

May 17, 1999

  1. Greg M called the meeting to order at 9:00 am.

    2.  
  2. The Brokerage WG RFP presentation was rescheduled to occur at 2:00 pm on Wednesday, 19 May, 1999 as part of a joint meeting with the ADSS SIG.

    3.  
  3. Shridhar R described a collaboration scenario between the ECDTF and CommerceNet:
Shridhar described the possible collaboration of the ECDTF and CommerceNet based on the above observations. This would be an excellent time for the ECDTF to leverage CommerceNet's expertise in building proof-of-concept solutions that use OMA-compliant products. It must be made clear that the ECDTF is not suggesting that CommerceNet should use only OMA-compliant products. It would be a rather fruitful research exercise to see how a CORBA-based solution interoperates with other solutions that are out there. The sense of the group was to support the establishment of a draft liaison agreement to be presented for discussion and possible adoption at the next meeting at San Jose.
  1. Shridhar next described a possible collaboration scenario between the Agents WG and Ontology.org (http://www.ontology.org):
Shridhar explained how Ontology.org could contribute to the Agent WG's RFI process http://www.objs.com/isig/agents.html. From a practical perspective, the starting point would be to introduce Ontology.org to the OMG in general and the ECDTF/Agent WG in particular. Next, Ontology.org could table issues that they have been trying to solve in the past. The sense of the group was to support the establishment of a draft liaison agreement to be presented for discussion and possible adoption at the next meeting at San Jose.
  1. Next, since there was a large number of newcomers at the meeting, Steve McConnell of OSM SARL presented an overview of the vision of the ECDTF business model (ec/99-05-04). He also described the Negotiation facility (adopted) specification and stressed upon the need to identify the core requirements of business-to-business e-commerce scenarios. E-commerce specifications are emerging and implementations of these will be available within a month’s time.

    2.  
  2. Greg presented a draft revised Mission Statement (ec/99-05-01). The sense of the group was to approve it in San Jose, after additional review.

    3.  
  3. David Frankel of Genesis presented the BOI. He explained the motivation behind this effort and the set of RFPs that have been issued as part of this effort. The RFPs are:
  1. After lunch, a GANTT chart of tangible results to date (ec/99-05-02) was presented by Greg. It will be augmented with future plans at San Jose.

    2.  
  2. Discussion of the current reference model as presented in the joint ECDTF-CommerceNet white paper was held (ec/97-06-09). It was agreed to develop it further into a UML-based reference architecture. The reference model WG was reconstituted. A mailing list (refarch-ec@omg.org) was setup.
  1. The WG participants are:


    2. Bhavani Thuraisingham/Mitre
    Nobue Nakamura/NetHighlanders
    Mike Schenk/TINA-C
    Sanjeev Goyal/Xerox
    Masaaki Inaba/Hitachi
    Kosule Imai/Hitachi
    Ken Kanishima/NTT
    Hisayoshi Inamori/NTT
    Steve McConnell/OSM
    Dee Copelan/DHL
    Hiroshi Shibato/NTT
    Francis McCabe/Fujitsu
    Intan Ishmail/Sprint
    Abdul Akram/Sprint
     

  2. The ECDTF group then joined the Internet SIG CSCW WG for discussion on collaborative systems. Mitre’s collaboration tool (http://www.jcs.mitre.org) was presented. The next joint meeting was scheduled for Monday morning between 10:30 am and 12:00 pm at San Jose to present the ECDTF adopted standards for community and collaborative frameworks.

    3.  
  3. After a presentation by Bill Vass of DoD/OSD on the Y2K status, the meeting was adjourned at 5:00 pm


May 18, 1999

  1. Steve McConnell called the meeting to order at 1:00 pm.

    2.  
  2. Steve presented an overview of the vision of the Agent WG (ec/99-05-06). He described the mission statement, the status of the Green Paper, and the FIPA-OMG liaison relationship. He presented an overview of the CORBA services and the possible areas of extension to support agent platforms and communication.

    3.  
  3. The URL of the Agent WG website is http://www.objs.com/isig/agents.html.

    4.  
  4. Francis McCabe of Fujitsu noted that the OMG-FIPA liaison was ratified by FIPA.

    5.  
  5. Francis presented the work that FIPA has done to date to define abstract architectures for agent platforms and communication (ec/99-05-05). It is FIPA’s intention that such abstractions are "reified" to concrete specifications by OMG. It was clear that FIPA’s progress since the Philadelphia meeting was substantial.


May 19, 1999

  1. The Brokerage WG was held in a joint session with the ADSS SIG that commenced at 2:00 pm.

    2.  
  2. A preliminary draft of the Brokerage RFP was reviewed. Steve McConnell agreed to provide written comments on the draft RFP by 15 July, 1999 (details will be posted to brokerage@omg.org).

    3.  
  3. Another review of the draft was scheduled for Monday during the ECDTF meeting at San Jose.

    4.  
  4. The WG was adjourned at 4:00 pm.