[Tsc] Fwd: Thoughts on the OGF Technical Direction and Roadmap Document

[Ian Foster]

Chris:

I have a couple of comments in response to your remarks, that may perhaps 
spur some useful discussion.

1) The role of the roadmap. You write:

Andre asks - "If the TSC writes down a roadmap, who will care?" I think that
>everyone in a WG or RG will care, because the acceptance or non-acceptance of
>their charter will depend on the degree to which it fulfills items on the
>roadmap. This will be something of a culture shock for many members.

I'm a big fan of a roadmap and of proactive attempts to engage the right 
people in producing the right specifications at the right time. I don't 
think that we will get where we want to be if we don't do that.

That said, I don't see why, if a group emerges "bottom up" with a 
well-argued and technically strong case for a specification that isn't in 
the roadmap, we would want to forbid that group from forming. E.g., maybe 
some comes forward and says that we need to define this particular XAMCL 
profile, so that we can share this particular set of policies. I doubt 
that's in the roadmap, but it could well be important to some group.

Allowing for that possibility will avoid alienating valuable OGF members, 
and avoid the technically and politically difficult challenge of having to 
capture in the roadmap everything that anyone might need to do.


2) The role of OGSA

You express some concerns about OGSA. I think these are important issues to 
discuss. However, before we do so, we need to be clear about what we mean 
by the term. Is OGSA:

a) A grand, top-down, boil-the-ocean attempt to define all possible service 
interfaces needed in current and future grids?  Or:

b) A principled approach to define, in an incremental but consistent 
manner, simple Web Services-based interfaces for the most important things 
that people need to do in grids, like job submission and management, data 
movement, etc.?

We've debated this in the past, and I guess you can tell which side I come 
down on (-:. I firmly believe that (b) is the approach we have to pursue. I 
also note that it is the approach that we are pursuing in practice.

Now it may be that there are people in OGF who just aren't interested in 
Web Services, and for them, OGSA (because of its Web Services focus) may 
not be appropriate.

However, I would hope that for everyone else, it can be. And I think not 
only will be very important to get engagement from players like Oracle in 
pursuing (b), but that you will find that your inputs will be welcomed.

Regards -- Ian.