Nice, France
4 November 1996
OMG Document Internet/96-11-07
The mission of OMG Internet Special Interest Group (ISIG) has been to determine how to extend the current OMG Object Management Architecture (OMA) to the Internet-that is, to help OMG create a roadmap for technology adoption that will scale OMA Next Generation (OMA-NG) to global proportions and interface it to various Internet and Web standards.
The purpose of this ISIG meeting was to review responses to the OMG Internet Services RFI issued in June 1996 at the OMG meeting in Washington D.C. Responses were due on 14 November 1996. Three responses were received and were reviewed at this meeting. In addition, two viewpoints, one from Tom Mowbray, chair of Common Facilities Platform Task Force, and one from Steve McConnell, chair of the Electronic Commerce Domain Task Force, were reviewed. These individual reviews were concluded at noon. The afternoon was spent in preliminary analysis, determining what the responses mean to extending and populating the OMG architecture, what sort of roadmap of technology adoption might make sense, and which groups in OMG might be involved in technology adoptions. We did not complete this process.
Initial recommendation of the Internet SIG were reported to the Common Facilities Task Force on 5 November 1996 where an initial recommendation was made to issue two RFPs, one for a URL-IOR mapping by ORBOS and the other to provide IDL Wrappers for Internet services FTP, WAIS, and Telnet by CFTF. In addition, we recommended the need for improved IDL-Java convergence. These recommendations were repeated at the special joint meeting of ORBOS, Common Facilities and interested others held after the Platform and Domain Technical Committee Meetings on Friday, 8 November 1996, where an additional Java to IDL Mapping RFP was planned by ORBOS (note that this is different but related to the current IDL to Java Mapping)
Additional work will be required between this and the next OMG meeting
in Tampa, Florida, in January 1997 to converge the submissions into a strawman
Internet Services Architecture (ISA) and technology adoption
roadmap and also to prepare initial RFPs. At the Tampa meeting, the
ISA and roadmap will be input to other OMG groups, including ORB/OS, Common
Facilities Task Forces, Object Model Subcommittee, and the Architecture
Board as recommendations from the Internet SIG. Also, we expect to submit
the ISA and Roadmap to domain task forces to gather their inputs and priorities
for RFPs. In addition, we will seek industry guidance on these documents.
At that meeting, we will consider the future role of Internet SIG and whether
to merge this activity into other OMG groups or continue it as an informational
group. Already, Common Facilities is strongly considering expanding its
roadmap to include Internet Services and Facilities.
Craig Thompson and Shel Sutton co-chaired the meeting. Thirty six people attended:
See MITRE's RFI response (internet/96-10-04) and presentation (internet/96-11-01) on the OMG server.
See OBJS's RFI response (internet/96-10-03) and presentation (internet/96-11-02) on the OMG server.
See DAT's RFI response (internet/96-10-05) and presentation (internet/96-11-03) on the OMG server.
See Steve McConnell's presentation (internet/96-11-04) on the OMG server, which covers the EC reference model viewpoint. A list of McConnell's near term targets (internet/96-11-05) is on the OMG server.
See Tom Mowbray's suggestions (internet/96-10-06) on the OMG server, consisting of an email based on OMG staff suggestions.
The afternoon was spent reviewing the responses. We completed a review of Sutton's response and some of McConnell's inputs and started on Thompson's inputs covering just the near term critical items. More analysis is needed to make the importance of the items we have identified clearer and to review the rest of the submissions. Nevertheless, in keeping with an urgency felt by many participants and voiced by Tom Mowbray, we went through an initial prioritization to identify near-term and critical candidates for RFPs.
We discussed:
Longer term but critical capabilities include
The Internet SIG meeting ended around 5 p.m. Immediately, following
the meeting, Shel Sutton, Craig Thompson, and Larry Smith completed a presentation
(internet/96-11-06) of results for a planned Tuesday morning meeting with
Common Facilities.
On Tuesday, 5 November, 1996, Shel Sutton and Craig Thompson represented Internet SIG and discussed Internet SIG's initial near-term recommendations with Common Facilities Task Force. There was immediate interest in defining IDL-wrapper interfaces for basic Internet services including FTP, WAIS, and Telnet which will set the stage for new, higher level services which could be based on these. Jeff Mischkinsky, Visigenic, volunteered to complete this RFP.
On Friday, 8 November, 1996, a special joint meeting of Common Facilities, ORBOS, Internet SIG, and interested others was held following the Platform and Domain Technical Committee meetings. Bill Cox, as acting chair of the Common Facilities Task Force, led the meeting. See minutes (orbos/96-11-XX or internet/96-11-XX). The first part of the meeting was a review of the Internet SIG recommendations, followed by a brainstorming session, then a brief analysis and finally a prioritization of near term (next meeting) RFPs. Three RFPs are planned:
The next meeting of the Internet SIG will take place in Tampa, Florida, on 13 January 1996. Before the meeting we expect to merge the ideas from the submissions and other inputs from the Nice Internet SIG meeting and the brainstorming from the Friday meeting (and any other inputs received) into a list and try to clarify any vague suggestions. Before the meeting, we will post the cumulative list to the tc@omg.org and other email lists asking for comment. We will use the meeting to continue this analysis and clarification and expect to complete a next iteration of a roadmap by 3 p.m. in time to review the three (or possibly more) draft RFPs expected to be ready for review at that meeting.