[ogsa-wg] OGSA-MWS-BOF at GGF14 on Tues June 28, noon-1:30

[Tom Maguire]

owner-ogsa-wg at ggf.org wrote on 06/22/2005 04:13:17 PM:

> Three alternate answers:
>
> [1] MS has been giving *public* talks (I attended one two weeks ago) in
> which they publicly stated that they believed that "everything" would be
in
> standards bodies within a year. I asked the speaker specifically with
regard
> to WS-SecureConversation, WS-Trust, and WS-Management and the speaker
said
> yes. I believe I followed up privately regarding WS-Transfer,
> WS-Enumeration, and WS-Eventing, and he said yes. He said that certain
> things are out of their control, of course, but that every intention is
to
> have them these specs in standards bodies by the end of the year. Yes, I
> understand that this is an easy statement to attack, but I tend to
believe
> him (MS realizes that every day these are NOT in a standards body is an
> opportunity lost, right?) Yes, I understand that the world is not so
simple,
> but I tend to believe them.

If you wish to believe this that is your perogative.  I on the other hand
will wait and not hold my breath.  As to opportunity lost; what is the
incentive to standardize if developers are happy to work with specs that
are not standardized?

> [2] Given that Don Ferguson and Francisco Curbera of IBM are co-authors
of
> WS-Eventing, and given that you're employed by IBM, I would turn this
around
> and ask you to see if you can ask internally to find out some
> publicly-disclosable answers, which you could then share with the rest of
> the community.

As I mentioned in earlier thread typically co-authors are contractually
obliged to one another with regard to joint work (read specs).  Those
agreements
usually spell out ALL of the details of the joint work up to and including
how agreement would be reached among the co-authors to bring to an SDO.
Typically those joint agreements would preclude unilateral action on any
one parties part with respect to the joint works.  Additionally, some of
those agreements preclude disclosure of the agreement details.
With that in mind, IBM as a co-author of WS-Eventing intends to bring the
WS-Eventing specification forward with the co-authors at some point.
However, there is no definitive date and as a forward looking statement
this statement of intent is subject to changes in business imperatives.

> [3] I've heard IPR issues as being the bugaboo regarding specifications
as
> opposed to documents ratified by standards bodies. So I'll assume that
> you're referring to the IPR issues in the latter half of your email. If
not,
> and you believe that these specs will never actually make it to a
standards
> body, then you can ignore the following response (and perhaps focus on my
> response #1, above)....

I was not focused on IPR although that is an issue.  Although not a first
level issue.

> Regarding IPR, admittedly, IPR has never been something that I've had the
> time or interest to deeply understand (I'm an academic, remember?) So
your
> statement (which I believe to refer to IPR) made me curious. In digging
to
> try to find the IPR issues/statements for WSRF and WS-Eventing (for
> example), I'm even more confused.
>
> On one hand, here's the statement on the WS-Eventing spec:
>
> "BEA, Computer Associates, IBM, Microsoft, Sun, and TIBCO (collectively,
the
> "Authors") each agree to grant you a license, under royalty-free and
> otherwise reasonable, non-discriminatory terms and conditions, to their
> respective essential patent claims that they deem necessary to implement
the
> Specification."
>
> This seems pretty clear (and desirable for our community, right?) So
what's
> the issue? That it might change before being submitted to a standards
body?
> Please help me understand.
>
> I'm trying to figure out the comparable statement with regard to, say,
> WS-Resource Property, it doesn't seem to be as clear. The spec itself
> doesn't seem to say anything directly one way or the other, except to say
in
> Appendix E ("OASIS takes no position regarding the validity or scope of
any
> intellectual property or any other rights that might be claimed to
pertain
> to the implementation or use of the technology described in this
> document....") On page 2, the spec *does* say "For information on whether
> any patents have been disclosed that may be essential to implementing
this
> specification, and any offers of patent licensing terms, please refer to
the
> Intellectual Property Rights section of WSRF TC Web page". This web page
> says that this TC operates under something called the "Legacy IPR
Policy",
> which seems to be a very generic statement (nothing specific to WSRF --
just
> "no confidentiality requirements on contributions", "contributors must
> disclose known patents"). But nothing that I can find about royalty-free.
> Perhaps I'm missing it.
>
> So, can you tell me why the WS-Eventing is so bad compared to WSRF? As we
> all know, it's not like "because it's in OASIS, it's royalty-free",
right?
>
> Thanks for clearing this up for me,
> Marty
>
> Marty Humphrey
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Computer Science
> University of Virginia
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Tom Maguire [mailto:tmaguire at us.ibm.com]
> > Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2005 2:44 PM
> > To: Marty Humphrey
> > Cc: 'Ogsa-Wg'; owner-ogsa-wg at ggf.org
> > Subject: RE: [ogsa-wg] OGSA-MWS-BOF at GGF14 on Tues June 28, noon-1:30
> >
> > So to be precise, with regard to status, you have no idea when or if
those
> > specifications will be submitted to an SDO for standardization.
Further
> > you have no way of knowing when or if those specifications will be
> > submitted to an SDO, given that there are most likely contractual
> > obligations between the current set of authors to which you would never
be
> > privy and if you were would be precluded from disclosing.
> >
> > Tom
> >
> > Frey’s Law: “Every 5 years the number of architecture components double
> > and
> > the ability to comprehend them halves”
> >
> >
> > Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when
> > there is nothing left to take away.   – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
> >
> >
> > T o m   M a g u i r e
> >
> >
> > STSM, On Demand Architecture
> >
> >
> > Poughkeepsie, NY  12601
> >
> > owner-ogsa-wg at ggf.org wrote on 06/22/2005 07:45:03 AM:
> >
> > >
> > > > 1.  Please could you clarify the status of WS-Transfer, WS-Eventing
> > and
> > > > WS-Enumeration in the terms of the OGSA Profile template?  I.e.
have
> > they
> > > > been submitted to an SDO, are they draft or evolving, etc.?
> > >
> > > As you know, there is a 4-step process by which these specs will
become
> > > standards: [1] "Develop", in which the spec is published; [2]
"Broader
> > > Participation", in which there are feedback and interop workshops
> > (resulting
> > > in possibly revising and republishing the specs); [3]
"Standardization",
> > in
> > > which the specs are submitted to a standardization body, which then
can
> > > modify the spec as well and eventually ratify; [4] "Profiles", in
which
> > a
> > > separate document shows how to *combine* specs, generally resulting
in a
> > > "subsetting" of the original specs.
> > >
> > > On Dec 1, 2004, Intel hosted a "feedback" workshop (step [2]), above,
> > for
> > > WS-Enumeration and WS-Transfer. The companies attending the workshop
> > > included AMD, Computer Associates, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft,
SAP,
> > > Sharp, Sonic, Sun, veritas, et. al. Although I can't entirely confirm
> > this,
> > > it looks like the following companies brought implementations of
> > > WS-Enumeration/WS-Transfer to this workshop: Microsoft, Dell, Intel,
> > NetIQ,
> > > Sun, and WebMethods.
> > >
> > > On Feb 19, 2004, Tibco hosted a "feedback" workshop for WS-Eventing.
> > > Attendees included Microsoft, BEA, IBM, NEC, Sonic, etc. On April 15,
> > 2004,
> > > Microsoft hosted an "interop" workshop on WS-Eventing ("The outcome
of
> > the
> > > workshop was the demonstration of interoperability among all the 7
> > > implementations." The seven implementations were from BEA, Canon,
Epson,
> > > Microsoft, Ricoh, Sonic, and Systinet.) It looks like there will be
> > another
> > > WS-Eventing workshop, although the date/time have not been announced.
> > >
> > > The most recent specs are:
> > >
> > > -- WS-Eventing: Aug 2004 (Authors: IBM, BEA, Computer Associates,
> > Microsoft,
> > > Sun, and Tibco).  This new version modifies the original version (Jan
> > 2004,
> > > I believe) to reflect the workshops.
> > >
> > > -- WS-Enumeration: Sept 2004 (Authors: Systinet, Microsoft, Sonic,
BEA,
> > > Computer Associates). This is the first version of the spec.
> > >
> > > -- WS-Transfer: Sept 2004 (Authors: Systinet, Microsoft, Sonic, BEA,
> > > Computer Associates). This is the first version of the spec.
> > >
> > > There's an interesting graphic that shows some of the progress from
> > > Microsoft's perspective here:
> > > http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/graphics/workshop-timeline.gif
> > (this
> > > is taken from
> > >
http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/community/workshops/default.aspx)
> > >
> > >
> > > > 2.  I can see that WS-Transfer specifies some of the functionality
of
> > WSRF
> > > > and WS-Eventing is largely equivalent to WS-BaseNotification, but
what
> > has
> > > > WS-Enumeration to do with this?  From a brief reading, it seems to
> > specify
> > > > functionality that is independent of either stack.
> > >
> > > I can see this point -- in our initial designs and experimentation
with
> > > WS-Transfer and WS-Eventing, we chose to not utilize WS-Enumeration.
But
> > we
> > > are increasingly considering WS-Enumeration as an important part of
the
> > > story.
> > >
> > > From Felipe Cabrera of Microsoft: "Many scenarios require data
exchange
> > > using more than just a single request/response message pair. Types of
> > > applications that require these longer data exchanges include
database
> > > queries, data streaming, the traversal of information such as
> > namespaces,
> > > and enumerating lists. Enumeration, in particular, is achieved
through
> > > establishing a session between the data source and the requestor.
This
> > > session is established using the Enumerate operation, which provides
an
> > > enumeration context that is then used in subsequent operations.
> > Successive
> > > messages within the session transport the collection of elements
being
> > > retrieved. No assumptions are made on the approach used by the
service
> > to
> > > organize the items that will be produced. What is expected is that
under
> > > normal processing circumstances, the enumeration will produce all the
> > > underlying data before the end of the session.... In its simplest
form,
> > > WS-Enumeration defines a single operation, Pull, which allows a data
> > source,
> > > in the context of a specific enumeration, to produce a sequence of
XML
> > > elements in the body of a SOAP message.... Three more
request/response
> > > operations are defined in WS-Enumeration: Renew, GetStatus, and
> > Release....
> > > State information regarding the progress of the iteration can be
> > maintained
> > > between requests by either the data source or the consuming
service....
> > In
> > > addition to enumerating the data entities present in a Web service,
it
> > is
> > > convenient to be able to perform several basic operations on them.
These
> > > operations are introduced in the WS-Transfer operation."
> > >
> > > I hope this helps,
> > > Marty
> > >
> > > Marty Humphrey
> > > Assistant Professor
> > > Department of Computer Science
> > > University of Virginia
> > >
> > >
> > >
>
>
>