Madrid, Spain
July 29 - August 2, 1996
Craig Thompson
Internet Special Interest Group. Craig Thompson (OBJS) chaired a one-day meeting of the Internet SIG. Twenty-eight people attended. See Minutes of Meeting #6 (http://www.objs.com/isig/mtg06.htm).
Rules RFP. Thompson presented a draft Rules Service RFP (http://www.objs.com/niiip/rfp.htm ) to Common Facilities Task Force and then the Architecture Board. The first group requested a few changes but the AB requested an informational presentation at the next OMG meeting in Hyannis to better understand the scope of rules.
Business Objects Domain Task Force. Thompson participated in this meeting, mainly trying to understand the scope of one of the group's two RFPs. The understandable one requests a list of objects that define common business objects like company, employee, manager, … for use in modeling businesses (real and virtual enterprises). The hard-to-fathom one requests a Business Object Facility - some of its characteristics are clear: it packages several services into one whole so OMG business users do not have to see the complexity of composition of all those pesky OMG services but what functionality is packaged and why not other functionality remains the mystery, even after several hours spent trying to understand. The odd thing is, 20+ companies sent in Letters of Intent to provide BOF specifications. Business objects is a hot but vague topic.
Meta Object Facility. Common Facilities Task Force has issued an RFP for a MOF. It is coordinated with BOF and an OA&D RFP since there is felt to be overlap but no one is sure what it is.
Object Model Subcommittee. One discussion was on ODP-RM (Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing from ANSI X3T3) and how it covers more ground than the OMG OMA (it does but maybe at 10,000 feet!). Another discussion was Andrew Watson (OMG chief architect) on why inheritance and subtyping are different-also covered parametric polymorphism and extensional/intentional distinctions. Inheritance is a necessary precondition for subtyping in C++ but not in Smalltalk. Another discussion was on a "uses" specification since OMG specs do not specify if a new spec uses object services. One camp says it shouldn't since implementation is up to vendors; another camp says you can't get mix-and-match without it, limits market if we don't have an optional specification. Uses is a relationship between implementations and interfaces. Another note: requirements are "implementation free statements of what is wanted. Another discussion on "what is the object model of the object services" - not sure what that means.
Semantics. BOF, MOF, OA&D, trader, relationships and perhaps other specifications expose semantics.
OMG Chair's Dinner. We reviewed CORBA marketing initiatives.
Telecom TF. Is issuing a Streams RFP (covers audio/video)
CORBAmed. 16 responses to RFI
Domain Technical Committee. Voted to issue Manufacturing RFP1 on Product Data Management Enablers and Telecom RFP1 on Streams. CORBAmed RFI responses were reviewed. Got a copy of OASIS: Object Architecture Standard for Insurance Systems.
Platform Technical Committee. Voted to issue Java Language Mapping RFP. The Type Versioning RFP received no responses since Sun claims IDL packages can accomplish much of the objective. Secure IIOP RFP responses were reviewed.
Sunset Policy. The OMG Board is considering a policy for gracefully retiring OMG specifications that are not commercially available. The Persistence Service is a candidate apparently!
OMA Revised. Geoff Lewis (Sun) presented a revised Object Management Architecture cast in terms of a framework, explaining that higher level objects may call lower level ones (applications, domains, facilities, and basic services effectively form layers).