[occi-wg] Request for input on expected timeline: promotion of OCCI P-REC to REC status standards

[Sill, Alan]

Dear OCCI working group leaders and members and Richard (Infrastructure Area Director),

This message is related to a review I am pursuing of OGF standards that are currently in the "Proposed Recommendation" category and that are likely to have accumulated progress on the path towards full recommendation status.

As background, and as you probably know, the decision to move forward to full REC status is left to the working group, and usually takes place when the group feels that the standards has reached maturity or at least functional completeness as a result of experience gathered from multiple implementations in the field. A minimum of six months of experience with the published proposed recommendation is required.  Often OGF working groups take longer, typically 1-2 years, before they are ready to advance a document to the next level.

When experience from these implementations has been gathered, it can be fed back to bring the proposed recommendation to a full recommendation status. These results are documented by one or more associated OGF publications in the "Experimental" category. Such documents can be written at any appropriate time and do not have to be associated directly with a desire to move from P-REC to REC status, so you can think of these as providing building blocks along the way.

Once there is a desire to promote a proposed to a full recommendation, an expert review is initiated, led by the Area Director.  The written output of this review is supplemented by the results of a public comment period somewhat similar to the one that you went through to produce the initial proposed recommendation. The relevant OGF council (in this case the Standards Council) then reviews the results and makes the external review available to OGF members, then makes a decision on the request to advance the document.

We have seen several OGF documents make the transition from P-REC to REC, and the result has generally been a better, more complete specification set and greater recognition of the maturity of the work based on completion of this process.  Some documents have languished, however, and while we may still think of OCCI as new, it has seen significant uptake in the community and has gathered real-world experience that makes me think that embarking on this process for one or more of the three basic OCCI specifications would make sense, while starting documents on other aspects of the OCCI working group product set.

Please consider this note to be an invitation to look over the process outlined in sections 4.5.3 and 4.5.4 of GFD.152, and a request to proceed accordingly depending on your progress and desires.

Best regards,

Alan


Alan Sill, Ph.D
Vice President of Standards, Open Grid Forum

Senior Scientist, High Performance Computing Center
Adjunct Professor of Physics, TTU

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:  Alan Sill, Texas Tech University  Office: Drane 162, MS 4-1167  :
:  e-mail: Alan.Sill at ttu.edu   ph. 806-834-5940  fax 806-834-4358  :
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