[DFDL-WG] Minutes for OGF DFDL Working Group Call, 17 November 2010

Alan Powell alan_powell at uk.ibm.com
Thu Nov 18 06:03:17 CST 2010


Open Grid Forum: Data Format Description Language Working Group

OGF DFDL Working Group Call, 17 November 2010

Attendees
Stephanie Fetzer (IBM)
Steve Hanson (IBM) 
Tim Kimber(IBM) 
Bob McGrath (NCSA)
Alan Powell (IBM)
Suman Kalia (IBM)
Gary Sikora (Progeny)
Joe Futrelle (NCSA)

Apologies

1.  Discuss with  Gary Sikora the use of DFDL by OMG MARS IEF ITS 
Gary gave us some background on how the standards process at OMG works in 
practice. He described the status of the IEF work group and the RFI that 
the DFDL WG had responded to. He suggested it would require direct support 
from interested parties, such as members of the OGF DFDL WG, to have DFDL 
adopted which would require a considerable commitment of time and 
resource. Steve will contact the IBM OMG representative to discuss further 
actions
 
2. Current Actions     
Updated below.

3. AOB 
Stephanie has discovered an incorrect statement in the description on 
discriminators. Alan agreed that it was incorrect. Stephanie will 
circulate to the WG

Meeting closed, 16:00

Next call  Wednesday  24 November 2010  15:00 UK  (10:00 ET)

Next action: 131
Actions raised at this meeting

No
Action 
130
Use of DFDL by OMG MARS IEF ITS 
17/11: Gary gave us some background on how the standards process at OMG 
works in practice. He described the status of the IEF work group and the 
RFI that the DFDL WG had responded to. He suggested it would require 
direct support from interested parties, such as members of the OGF DFDL 
WG, to have DFDL adopted which would require a considerable commitment of 
time and resource. Steve will contact the IBM OMG representative to 
discuss further actions


Current Actions:
No
Action 
066
Investigate format for defining test cases
25/11:IBM to see if it is possible to publish its test case format.
04/12: no update
...
17/02: IBM is willing in principle to publish the test case format and 
some of the test cases. May need some time to build a 'compliance suite'
24/03: No progress
03/03: Discussions have been taking place on the subset of tests that will 
be provided.
10/03: work is progressing
17/03: work is progressing
31/03: work is progressing
14/04: And XML test case format has been defined and is being tested.
21/04. Schema for TDML defined. Need to define how this and the test cases 
will be made public
05/05: Work still progressing
12/05: Work still progressing
02/06: Work still progressing on technical and legal considerations
...
25/08: Will chase to allow Daffodil access to test cases.   The WG should 
define how implementation confirm that they 'conform to DFDL v1'
01/09: IBM still progressing the legal aspect. Intends to publish 100 or 
so tests as soon as it can, ahead of a full compliance suite.
08/09: IBM still progressing
15/09: IBM still progressing, expect tests to be available within a few 
weeks
22/09: IBM still progressing, expect tests to be available within a few 
weeks
29/09:Test cases are being prepared.
06/10: Some test cases should be available next week. Steve would like to 
be able to show the test case information at OGF 30. 
13/10: Still progressing
10/11: Legal issues cleared, IBM in process of collecting 100 example test 
cases, ideally ones that fit the 'extended conformance' of NCSA Daffodil 
17/11: Work is progressing on verifying the test cases. It should be 
possible to distribute to the WG in 2 weeks.
111
Daffodil DFDL parser
11/08: Bob and Alejandro described the new implementation that they have 
developed. It is a new code base and is not based on the Deffudle 
prototype. It is written in scala and implements approximately 80% of the 
features in the public comments draft of DFDL V1. Alejandro will send a 
list of the features not implemented.
We discussed the scenarios that motivated the development which was to 
extract data from various sources and transform into canonical formats.
Bob offered to make Daffodil available for the WG to assess the 
functionality. IBM WG members will get approval the company  to allow them 
to receive Daffodil.
Bob raised the question that if Daffodil becomes the public implementation 
of DFDL then we will need to work out how that would be funded and 
managed.
It would be helpful if IBM test cases were available to Daffodil. IBM will 
investigate
25/08: Alejandro had sent a list of the functions that he has implemented 
and Steve ahd responding indicating the extra functions he thought were 
essential.
Since then Alejandro has implemented some of the missing functions, such 
as escape schemes, pre-defined variables, binary decimal numbers, etc, and 
will update his list.
Bob is planning to make the parser available on the internet to allow 
testing.
His organisation is being reorganised and he doesn't know what the 
priority of  Daffodill will be so it is essential that we move quickly. It 
would help if IBM could indicate its support for Daffodil in some 
semi-formal way.
01/09: Alejandro updating Daffodil to include escape schemes, unordered 
sequences and ignoreCase.
Daffodil being placed under formal source control in anticipation of 
external release.
Bob has a start October deadline to create a report on what has been done 
for his sponsors.
It would be great if we could get Daffodil on the web and have run some 
IBM tests so it could be highlighted at OGF 30 at end October.
08/09: Alejandro is marking up Spec draft 42 to indicate which features 
Daffodil implement. Bob expects Daffodil to be available on the web soon.
15/09: Alejandro had indicated in the specification which functions were 
implemented in Daffodill. Steve had reviewed and identified which function 
need to be implemented and which could be considered optional (see action 
099). Alejandro is implementing the missing core functions. There was some 
discussion about the limitations on unordered groups. (stop value and 
expression not supported). It was agreed that it should be a schema 
definition error if dfdl:occursCountKind is 'stopValue' on any element 
within an unordered sequence and a floating element.
22/09: not discussed
29/09: not discussed
06/10: Alejandro has left NCSA. Bob is making the case for continuing and 
having a replacement. Bob to agree with Steve what can be said at OGF30. 
13/10: Bob still progressing project funding and making Daffodil 
publically available.
10/11: NCSA internal & sponsor (US National Archive in Washington DC - 
Electronic Records Administration) reviews passed. NCSA have new resource 
allocated - Joe Futrelle.  Bob has started open source paperwork. ETA end 
December. 
17/11: Joe has started coming up to speed with Daffodil. Bob is waiting 
for signoff from the university to open source the code. 
112
DFDL certification process
25/08: Discussed how to certify DFDL implementations. Alan to investigate 
if OGF have a defined process.
01/09: In progress, spec needs to state what conformance means, as part of 
this work
08/09: Discussed what needs to be said in the spec and agreed that details 
of a conformance test suite should be in another document.
Alan to draft conformance section. 
15/09: Alan had look at the conformance sections in XML and Schema 
specifications both of which indicate sections which must be implemented. 
None just say 'execute the test suite'.  They talk in terms of conformance 
of document, schema and processors.. 
22/09: no progress
22/09: Alan has added  short Conformance and Optional Features sections to 
spec which was briefly discussed. Discussed naming for processors that 
don't implement optional features and those that implement all features.
06/10: Need to decide what/how test cases and certification process should 
occur 
13/10: no progress 
10/11: no progress 
17/11: no progress  
123
DFDL tutorial
13/10: Draft of first 3 chapters has been written and will be distributed 
to WG
10/11: Posted to grid forge here (
http://forge.gridforum.org/sf/go/doc16106?nav=1), work continuing at IBM 
to define a standard example-based chapter framework and to author 
additional chapters. Contributors welcome!
17/11: Steve, Stephanie and Alan had a meeting to discuss the best 
structure for the tutorial and decide which examples to use throughout. 
The meeting raised more questions. Further discussions will be held.
124
DFDL web content on OGF standards pages 
13/10: no progress 
10/11: no progress
17/11: Alan has looked at the OGF web pages and there aren't many 
standards listed. Some of the links point to very short primers rather 
than the specification 
129
Press release to publicise DFDL
Steve is pulling together a press release at IBM. Want to include as many 
contributors and interested parties as possible.NCSA are keen to be 
included. Also likely that US National Archive will want to be included. 
Mike has indicated OCO are too. 
17/11: no progress  
130
Use of DFDL by OMG MARS IEF ITS 
17/11: Gary gave us some background on how the standards process at OMG 
works in practice. He described the status of the IEF work group and the 
RFI that the DFDL WG had responded to. He suggested it would require 
direct support from interested parties, such as members of the OGF DFDL 
WG, to have DFDL adopted which would require a considerable commitment of 
time and resource. Steve will contact the IBM OMG representative to 
discuss further actions



Closed actions
No
Action 













Work items:
No
Item
target version
status
042
Mapping of the DFDL infoset to XDM 
none
not required for V1 specification
070
Write DFDL primer 


071
Write test cases.










































 
Regards

 
Alan Powell
 
Development - MQSeries, Message Broker, ESB
IBM Software Group, Application and Integration Middleware Software
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