[saga-rg] GGF16 saga session 1 notes

[Shantenu Jha]

SAGA-WG/RG meeting at GGF16, Session 1, Monday 13th, 17:30-19:00

Notes taken by Thilo Kielmann

Andre opens the session, explains the IPR policy and passes around the
sign-up sheet

Agenda bashing
--------------

The following agenda is proposed and agreed by the audience:
0. Quick recap of the re-chartering status.
1. Discuss and agree on:
    - SAGA-RG Charter
    - SAGA-Core WG Charter
2. Next steps for the new SAGA-RG

(Discussions about SAGA API details and the documents in preparation
will be held in the other SAGA meetings later this week.)

1. Rechartering
---------------

The "old" SAGA-RG split into two separate groups. A research group
(SAGA-RG), has been tasked with taking care of research-like aspects
such as API look-and-feel and areas for API scope extension. A working
group (SAGA-CORE-WG) will work towards an API standard and language
bindings based on the work done so far.  The rechartering is expected
to be approved by GFSG the same day. [Note added: And so it was; see posting
on saga-rg at ggf.org list]

A) Research group
   Andre reads the charter to the audience. No objections were made.

B) Working group
   Andre reads the charter to the audience. No objections were made.

2. Next steps for the new SAGA-RG
---------------------------------

The discussion revolved around identifying areas/functionalities for
API scope extensions.

Obvious candidates for scope extension are GridRPC, GridCPR, and
resource discovery. A start to be made at this GGF.

It was emphasized that the poll for additional use cases is still
open.  It is expected that occasionally a new use-case-document will
be produced that will cover those new use cases and the scope
extensions resulting from them.

The GridCPR group was discussed first:
- Has use cases
- Has architecture doc (may serve as  an API requirements doc)
- Both documents are already beyond public review, this gives us stable input
- We should now form a design team to define a strawman SAGA-CPR API
- Defining the API is GridCPR's next milestone anyway
- We will try to use a SAGA look and feel
- The gridcpr mailing list should be the right place to the design team

- Tom Goodale is being volunteered (with Derek Simmel and Paul Stodghill)
  to draft a SAGA-CPR strawman
- Timeline: have a session on that at GGF17

The GridRPC group was discussed next:
- has already API and user group
- needs/wants to align with SAGA still
- SAGA-RPC should be established, but no volunteers were identified yet

There was a discussion of the needs of ASTRO-RG: remote data access
- remote, format-dependent data access
- data formats, probably a very hard problem (HDF, netCDF)
- also remote data bases?
- maybe beyond SAGA scope

Common look and feel is another issue for the new SAGA-RG.
Possible topics covered by this:
- security, but security group doesn't know yet either what to put into an API
- quality of service, also little confidence among the SAGA folks how to get
  this right
- service discovery, resouce discovery, life time management
- lifetime of security handles
- persistent information storage
- application-level information service
- application steering, needs auditing, tracking
- currently has notification, we need self-describing events (-> steering?)
- message communication on top of streaming

Bottom line (rough consensus): 
- the current strawman API is close to completion 
  (will be ready for the next ggf)
- we will need further input (and use cases!) for extension topics

The next SAGA session at GGF16 will cover more WG and API related topics.
19:00 session is closed