[occi-wg] Deadline for consensus [rant]

Tue May 26 13:34:16 CDT 2009

Hi All,

There is an easy way around this issues that been brought up several 
different ways and protects the user and the providers from RAND and 
other instruments.

We can make OCCI transport and representation agnostic, which was 
suggested early on. That requires a logical model definition and 
selection of an implementation (a semantic model).  The OCCI ended up 
with that exact structure for the specification. In fact, though the 
hard work of Andy Edmonds, we even have a start for defacto 
representation language of the OCCI logical model in XSD.

If, we re-evaluate transport and representation agnostic strategy for 
OCCI, we can pick a "first implementation" with the knowledge we will 
"need" other implementations in the near future. IMO, I do not believe 
for one second we can get away with one implementation, not with the 
recent trend in protocol adoption. Adopting this strategy does not 
exclude providing bridges and gateways, more traditional works,  to 
bridge technology gaps between OCCI and foreign systems, in fact 
agnostic strategy may produce a more valuable technology.

Additionally, the adoption of a multi-protocol system that interchanges 
cloud computing management, cloud computing configuration information 
and cloud computing sevice (vm) life cycle control is probably fairly 
unique in terms of technology.

The bottom line; is PICK ONE implementation, if we are not happy with 
it, or the protocol fashion critics frown on the OCCI  for "not playing 
in top of mind", we can always give it a face lift. Pick one, its a 
interchange and management system.

IMO, there is only ONE big issue that affects the decision on which way 
to go:  human usability/readability in native form. 
If is is an ABSOLUTE requirement, go with atom. If not, some XML 
representation.  Either way you WILL be representing the OCCI logical 
model. 

One more issue in my rant, on the issue of human usability/readability, 
once you include links, the protocol is no longer "easily 
interpretable". An example is the Widows registry: its human readable, 
but try to read and find all the linked GUIDs. Its nearly impossible to 
find them, human readable or not. Reading the OCCI will have the same 
issues as reading the Windows registry.  Human usability/readability is 
a pipe dream, at least without putting a lot of work into publishing 
rules, which complicates implementations.

-gary

Sam Johnston wrote:
> On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 4:23 PM, Roger Menday 
> <roger.menday at uk.fujitsu.com <mailto:roger.menday at uk.fujitsu.com>> wrote:
>
>
>     Hi Sam, 
>
>     not to undervalue your hard work, but in my opinion I don't think
>     we will be able to make a decision this week. We don't have all
>     the time in the world, but I don't fancy rushing a decision on
>     this one. 
>
>
> If you're right and we can't make a decision this week (bearing in 
> mind that all the information we need to make it is already on the 
> table) then I fear we'll not be able to make a decision at all. It 
> certainly wouldn't be the first working group to lose inertia after 
> getting caught up in a religious debate and it won't be the last, but 
> we need to draw the line somewhere and get on with the job. Public 
> perception aside, it's important that we don't miss the only 
> opportunity we have to gather information from an OGF event rather 
> than wasting even more of everyone's time.
>
> What more do you need for us to get out of this rut because I'm 
> beginning to lose faith... what started as something I was proud to be 
> involved in is fast becoming an embarassment.
>
> Sam
>
>
>>     All,
>>
>>     As you know our already extended deadline for the formats
>>     discussion passed on Friday. Thijs is now in the unfortunate
>>     position of having to explain why we will miss our first
>>     self-assigned deliverable deadline (an implementable draft) on
>>     Thursday and I know well how it feels to have to stand in front
>>     of an audience with nothing to say, having done so twice last
>>     week (it's only with a big "personal vision only" disclaimer that
>>     I was able to say anything at the Cloud Computing Expos).
>>
>>     Iff we can come to consensus about the format today (or at the
>>     very latest tomorrow) then we need not watch another deadline
>>     sail by and in doing so risk being declared a failure
>>     prematurely. Indeed if we can't achieve even a loose consensus
>>     after all the discussion then I may well be the first to say so -
>>     my time (and travel!) budget for OCCI has already been well
>>     exceeded and the irrelevant RF vs RAND discussion has tested
>>     what's left of my patience. Please focus on the task at hand and
>>     if you have any specific issues about the latest proposal then
>>     raise them sooner rather than later - I've put considerable
>>     effort into optimising Atom out for the most common use case
>>     (individual resources) over the weekend and by shifting metadata
>>     to HTTP headers the resulting descriptor format is far simpler
>>     than even I would have thought possible - see APIDesign
>>     <http://forge.ogf.org/sf/wiki/do/viewPage/projects.occi-wg/wiki/APIDesign>
>>     for examples.
>>
>>     On the subject of rolling our own protocol from scratch, I for
>>     one am dismissing the suggestion for reasons previously
>>     explained. I don't think this group has (nor needs) what it takes
>>     to implement an Internet protocol from the ground up and any
>>     attempt to do so would be fraught with danger, not to mention
>>     completely unnecessary given the corpus of work done by others at
>>     the IETF (who _are_ geared up for such tasks).
>>
>>     Thanks,
>>
>>     Sam
>>
>>     _______________________________________________
>>     occi-wg mailing list
>>     occi-wg at ogf.org <mailto:occi-wg at ogf.org>
>>     http://www.ogf.org/mailman/listinfo/occi-wg
>
>     Roger Menday (PhD)
>     <roger.menday at uk.fujitsu.com <mailto:roger.menday at uk.fujitsu.com>>
>
>     Senior Researcher, Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe Limited
>     Hayes Park Central, Hayes End Road, Hayes, Middlesex, UB4 8FE, U.K.
>     Tel: +44 (0) 208 606 4534
>
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