[ogsa-wg] Profile documents

[Dave Berry]

On reading Ian's message, I wonder whether I was clear.  I want the
criteria for *submitting* a recommendation profile proposal to admit a
spec that has a single implementation.  This document will have to go
through the normal process before it can become an actual
recommendation.  This is a similar (although stricter) process to any
other recommendation document in the GGF and similar standards bodies.
So this process should be well-understood in the community.  The process
will be stricter than the existing GGF process fir recommendation
documents, at the existing process doesn't require any implementation to
exist before submitting a recommendation, and has fewer criteria for
acceptance as a recommendation.
 
WS-I is primarily a reactive body.  GGF needs to show leadership: we
should steer the development of Grid technology.  On occasion we will
face the "chicken and egg" problem, in which people are reluctant to
adopt a specification because it isn't part of a profile, but we can't
make it part of a profile because it isn;t widely adopted.  The process
by which a submission becomes a full recommendation seems to me an
excellent way of resolving this issue.
 
Any profile document will exist in 'draft' form before it is submitted
as a 'recommendation', just as any other specification.  As I understand
the aim of the profile template document, it is precisely to specify
that profiles must have links to implementation experience and adoption,
and to define the rules for creating them; i.e. it specifically
addresses the concerns that Ian raises.  I don't see a problem with
'draft' documents; everyone knows that documents go through a draft
stage.  Unless Ian's reference to 'draft' profiles was referring to
"Informational" profiles?
 
One concern of Ian's that isn't addressed by the profile template
document is which bodies can produce profiles.  The intention, I
believe, is that the OGSA profiles have to be produced by the OGSA WG.
I agree that we need some central body that controls the production of
OGSA profiles.
 
Dave.
 
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Ian Foster [mailto:foster at mcs.anl.gov] 
Sent: 21 December 2004 13:04
To: Dave Berry; d.snelling at fle.fujitsu.com
Cc: ogsa-wg
Subject: Re: [ogsa-wg] Profile documents



	Dave's comment captures a major concern I have about how the
profile notion seems to be evolving. 
	
	A profile, in the sense of the WS-I profiles that formed at
least the starting point for our discussion, documents a way of using
well-established and widely used specifications. I believe we have
fairly broad consensus for that definition.
	
	However, we are now introducing the idea of a "draft" profile
that does not need to be grounded in adoption. In so doing, I fear that
we abandon the discipline that will allow us to ensure that profiles
represent authoritative statements on how to build Grid systems. GGFers
will conclude that a profile is a way to respectability. We will start
to see many proposals for profiles, many with no connection to
implementation experience or adoption, and I don't see how we will be
able to say yes to some and no to others, as we will have no clear rules
for doing so. Working groups will start to produce their own profiles,
as well. We will end up with a set of profiles that look as diffuse and
ill defined as the current set of GGF working groups. Of course, some
will be "draft" and some "recommended", but I think that distinction
will be lost on the community.
	
	DAIS for me represents an excellent test case for what a profile
should be. It's a nice piece of work and has at least one academic
implementation. However, it hasn't seen any adoption by database
vendors. That to me means that it doesn't belong in a profile. This is
not to say at all that DAIS is not valuable, or that the DAIS team
should not be working to get DAIS adopted by vendors. It's simply saying
that a profile isn't the way to do it.
	
	Ian.
	
	
	At 09:22 AM 12/21/2004 +0000, Dave Berry wrote:
	

		I definitely want to allow the DAIS spec in the first
data profile.
		This is partly the chicken and egg question; if a spec
isn't in an OGSA
		profile, people will be less inclined to implement it.
This is
		particularly applicable to the DAIS spec, because we
want people to
		implement it as part of their DBMS systems, not as a
standalone
		executable.  (This is to avoid unnecessary copying of
data in the
		implementations).

	_______________________________________________________________
	Ian Foster                    www.mcs.anl.gov/~foster
	Math & Computer Science Div.  Dept of Computer Science
	Argonne National Laboratory   The University of Chicago    
	Argonne, IL 60439, U.S.A.     Chicago, IL 60637, U.S.A.
	Tel: 630 252 4619             Fax: 630 252 1997
	        Globus Alliance, www.globus.org <http://www.globus.org/>

	

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.ogf.org/pipermail/ogsa-wg/attachments/20041221/127684c5/attachment.htm