OMG Internet SIG
Minutes of Meeting #6

Summary

• At the recommendation of ISIG, the Platform Technical Committee extended the deadline for the Internet Services RFI to October 14, 1996.
• Netscape announced OMG IIOP support planned for forthcoming versions of clients and servers-see below for details.
• We discussed and began to structure an Internet Services Architecture that extends the OMG Object Management Architecture-see below for details

Agenda

• Attendees
• Meeting
  • Netscape Announcement
  • RFI Submission Deadline Extended
  • Joint OMG-W3C Workshop on Distributed Objects and Mobile Code
  • OOPSLA Workshop coming up on OO + Web Integration
  • Discussion on Internet Services Architecture

Attendees

Frank Bilger - SNI - frank.bilger@mch.sni.uk
Kathy Bohrer - IBM - kbohrer@vnet.ibm.com
Tim Brinson - Protocol Systems - tim@protocol.com
Carol Burt - BellSouth - Carol.Burt@bst.bls.com
Cory Casanave - Data Access - Cory_Casanave@omg.org
Johan Fantenberg - Ericsson - Euajfaguab.ericsson.se
Dave Gamble - Micro Focus - dave@mfltd.co.uk
Richard Herbert - ICC - r.herbert@man0521.wins.icl.co.uk
Jim Hughes - Fujitsu -jfh@hal.com
Gene Jarboe - NSA - hej@tycho.ncsc.mil
Jonathan Legh-Hunt - BT - jleghsmi@jungle.bt.co.uk
Mika Leppihen - Nokia research Center - mika.leppinen@research.nokia.com
Carl-Uno Mamros - Xerox - mannos@cp10.es.xerox
Stephen McConnell - OSM Consortium - McConnell@osm.net
Jose Miguel Micorde - Meter 4 Software - josemm@meter4.es
Rudolf M. Riess - DEC - rudolf.riess@ljo.dec.com
Tom Rutt - ATT/Lucent - ter@arch4.ho.att.com
Kent Salmond - Tande, - Salmond_kent@tandem.com
Colin Scott - Anderson Consulting - colin.t.scott@ac.com
Selden Stewart - NIST - selden@nist.gov
Dave Stringer - Nortel - d.r.stringer@nortel.co.uk
Shel Sutton - MITRE - shel@mitre.org
Patricia Tangney - Broadcom Eireann Research Ltd - PT@broadcom.ie
Craig Thompson - Object Services and Consulting - thompson@objs.com
Steve Vinoski - Hewlett-Packard - vinoski@apollo.hp.com
Per Vorm - Ericsson - lmdvrm@lmd.ericsson.se
Andrew Watson - OMG - andrew@omg.org
Shig Yamada - Fujitsu - yamada@ossi.com

Meeting

Craig Thompson (OBJS) recorded the minutes for the meeting. Shel Sutton (MITRE) led the discussion.

Netscape Announcement

Near the beginning of the meeting, Jon Siegel (OMG) came in to tell us of an announcement from Netscape

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif (July 29, 1996) -- Netscape Communications Corporation today announced it will embrace the Internet Inter-ORB Protocol (IIOP) standard as the basis for its distributed object model in its new Netscape ONE open network environment. Netscape is joining the Object Management Group consortium in supporting IIOP as an open standard for distributed computing on the Internet and intranets, providing enterprise developers with a link to existing applications as well as an easy means for creating new distributed applications. More than 50 companies today announced their support for Netscape ONE as an open standards-based framework for building interoperable Internet applications. See here and here for details.

This was very welcome news and we spent some time discussing its implications. Siegel also mentioned that Microsoft had pre-announced a plan to put OLE specifications in the hands of a standards group, the Burton Group, centered in Salt Lake City. Chris Stone had requested if OMG could join and had received a negative initial response.

RFI Submission Deadline Extended

We discussed and ended up changing the deadline for submission for the Internet Services RFI from August 26 to October 14, 1996. Reasons for extending the deadline were:

• the Netscape announcement changes the picture somewhat
• the current RFI deadline of August 26 is too close to the issue date in early July
• the press statement announcement for the RFI was issued even later (July 15)

Report on the Joint Workshop on Distributed Objects and Mobile Code

Thompson reported on this workshop that had been jointly sponsored by OMG and W3C and held in Boston, MA, on 25-25 June 1996. One interesting outcome was that there are several different camps that think differently about objects and the net and few people have the big picture but most see the issues from a local perspective. That meant that, though we gathered influential people and educated each other, we did not make great leaps forward during the workshop. Position papers for the workshop are here. The draft workshop report is here.

OOPSLA Workshop coming up on OO + Web Integration

Thompson called everyone's attention to the workshop at OOPSLA'96 entitled Toward the Integration of WWW and Distributed Object Technology to be held in San Jose, CA, on Sunday, October 6 1996. Position papers are (were) due on August 12, 1996and are now posted on the web here.

Discussion on Internet Services Architecture extension to OMA

We did not schedule any presentations at this Internet SIG meeting. Instead, we used the meeting to begin to structure possible responses to the Internet RFI (that is, http://www.objs.com/isig/rfi.htm). Shel Sutton and Craig Thompson led this portion of the meeting, which completed the day's work.

Thompson cast the problem as follows. Identify functions f_i that complete the equation:

• Today's OMA + {f1, f2, …, fN} = OMA scaled to the Internet and WWW

The end result of the discussion should be a better understanding of the "shape" of an OMG Internet Services Architecture, that is, an extension of the OMA to Internet-enable and Web-enable OMG applications and integrate OMG-enable Internet and Web applications with object technology. The following technology areas were listed as needed to complete Thompson's "equation".

• what sort of object model is appropriate for the Web? IDL, Java, something else? If Java then will the COSS services be implemented or will people all live in the Java libraries and RMI worlds for most purposes?
• web + object architectures - which will survive? implications of Java ORBs. We're off to an interesting start with the Netscape announcement and some products have emerged (e.g., VisiBroker from Visigenic, OrbixWeb)
• implications of WANs and scaling for OMA/CORBA - these include QoS and opportunities for optimization based on network latency and other measures. Also, we need better understanding of composition of services (what are the different kinds of dependencies) and federation of like kinds of services (so namespaces and query services federate)
• objects at a distance, mobile objects, mobile code - we want all three, right?
• interoperability of naming (e.g., OIDs and URLs) and federation of namespaces when IDL names in one environment clash with the same names in another.
• object file systems - wrap the file system with objects and you get a huge coarse OODB system
• Internet tools and Web utilities including search engines
• firewall negotiation - can we do away with these and replace them with security policies, what are the recommendations for enhancing the security white paper or spec. What about virtual private networks? What about EITech's post-and-pickup?
• push-pull models of consistency maintenance
• adapter-wrapper technology
• electronic commerce - we'll leave this area to the OMG Electronic Commerce SIG
• registry/repository as an extension to the Interface Repository
• service discovery - how is this different than trading? - queries about capabilities and negotiation
• other things we still need in general
  • asynchronous messaging
  • fault tolerance (groups as in ISIS) and replication
• what would an Internet Services Architecture look like (bring your strawman positions)
• if we do all the above, will we succeed technically in merging OMG and Web/Internet technologies to realize the objective "objects for the masses"? what else would we have to do?

Last updated: 22 August 1996. Send corrections to Craig Thompson. Back to OMG ISIG homepage.