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

[Marty Humphrey]

> > > (3) What are the plans for the "WS-I-only" profile?
> >
> > What is being proposed is not a WS-I only OGSA profile. WS-I (basic &
> > security profiles) define a set of specifications and how
> 
> Just to clarify, the use of quotation marks above was intentional due to
> the
> lack of a name, and I agree with what you said.
> 
> > > I agree multiple basic profiles are bad idea wrt interoperability
> > > and architecture perspective.
> >
> > But may be critical to wider grid adoption which is why I believe GGF
> > accepts multiple approaches. IMHO it is a pity that this policy still
> > seems to be resisted... may be we should drop the O in OGSA?
> >
> > Recall, that the 'OGSI profile' did not gain wide adoption. Exploring
> > different approaches can only help to improve understanding. What is
> > important IMHO is to bring all approaches into a standards process so
> > that whatever mechanisms that are used are defined. Once
> > defined natural selection can drive their evolution.
> 
> I won't be able to go to the MWS-BOF (I'll be in the OGSA-EGA session), so
> I'll leave my opinion registered here, very briefly.
> 
> The risk is that if we leave it for the market to decide, the market won't
> choose against one or another profile, but it will choose against OGSA as
> a
> whole. The people willing to pay for OGSA functionality won't be able to
> get
> different components from different parties to work together because they
> won't fit the same profile, won't speak the same protocols, etc.. The fact
> that the architecture is theoretically unified will mean nothing because,
> from their point of view, in practice things simply do not work, period.
> OGSA as a brand will be meaningless. Who wins then? I have a few guesses,
> but I am not stupid enough to list them in public forum.

FACT: OGSA is predicated on Web services best practices, tooling, and
infrastructure.

FACT: Not everyone is enamored with WSRF, meaning that WSRF is unlikely to
be "just there" in the tooling and infrastructure anytime soon.

OGSA-WG can choose to stick its collective head in the sand and hope that
this issue goes away, or it can attempt to address this problem head-on and
come up with a solution. This is essentially what this BOF is about. 

I'll point out that I'll be happy either way: If we decide that it does not
make sense to continue this non-WSRF profile, then my group has already
produced a pretty high-quality implementation of WSRF on the .NET framework
that we'll continue to refine and support. If we as a group decide to move
forward with this non-WSRF profile, then we already have some results with
an implementation of WS-Transfer we wrote and we'll hopefully have a larger
community working on this effort.

Finally, to twist things around, if this effort is squashed solely because
WSRF is "first to market", then... to quote Fred: " Who wins then? I have a
few guesses, but I am not stupid enough to list them in public forum."

Again, to stress, I personally just want convergence. If the group decides
that OGSA would better converge by focusing on WSRF, then I will happily
support this decision (in fact, my research group's lives would probably be
easier!) I just want this decision to be made based on realistic and
technically sound evidence, not religion.

-- Marty

Marty Humphrey
Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science
University of Virginia