Report of April X3L8 Special Interest Group Meeting
Meeting Report
L8 Special Interest Group
Held at the National Institute of Standards and Technology
March 20 & 21, 1997
Attendees:
Brent Archinal, U.S. Naval Observatory
Bruce Bargmeyer, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Dan Gillman, Bureau of the Census
Alan Goldfine, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Henry Heffernan, EDPNS
Michael Huhns, University of South Carolina
Joe Leahy, Science Applications International Corporation
Douglas Mann, Battelle
John McCarthy, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
Judith Newton, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Phong Ngo, Science Applications International Corporation
Dan Gillman chaired the meeting except for Thursday morning, during which Judith Newton chaired the meeting.
The following reports the issues raised and decisions made:
1. Status of items sent for CD
ISO/IEC 11179, Part 1. Months ago, Dan Gillman sent the current version of Part 1 to the SC 14 secretariat for CD ballot. Dan will put the latest version up on the L8 FTP/Web site in several versions: WordPerfect 6.x, PDF, and if possible html (if WP7 automatically makes a good html version). If WP works to create the HTML file, Dan will create the new subdirectory for Part 1, because several gif files will be produced for the diagrams. The GIF files would clutter up, get lost in, and make it difficult to manage the 11179 directory.
Bruce Bargmeyer and Michael Huhns presented the latest version of Part 2. This draft includes the changes suggested at the last WG4 meeting. Michael edited it to include the graphic that he provided for discussion at the Brazil WG4 meeting. He also made other suggested changes and cleaned up the text. It will now be sent to the SC14 secretariat for CD ballot. Bruce will put the latest version of Part 2 up on the L8 FTP/Web server.
2. JTC1 Web policies
We reviewed the new JTC1 Web policies and find them improved. We may send some of our material to a contact listed in the JTC1 documents to help get our SC14 pages into the recommended formats.
3. New International Representative search
Paul Hawes has resigned this position. Admiration and appreciation was expressed for his work and for his participation on the committee. It is hoped that he may be able to return to active involvement at a future date. A call for volunteers for the IR position has been sent out with a June deadline.
4. Future X3L8 work
Henry Heffernan handed out a document discussing L8 needs and opportunities. Henry briefly discussed the document, which highlights opportunities to get L8 standards utilized by a wide range of users. L8 participants are asked to read and comment upon the document.
5. Metadata Workshop update
A good range of interests is represented among potential participants who have signed up for the workshop. There is still space available, so the call for participation will be revised to show that people can continue to sign up on a first come, first served basis until we reach the limit of 75 participants.
Mary Anne Lawler of JTC1 raised some concerns about the workshop. John McCarthy, Frank Olken and Bruce Bargmeyer prepared a response.
6. SC14 plenary meeting in USA in 98
Doug will check to see if Battelle is willing to sponsor the 1998 SC14 meeting. If so, he will fill in a form and send to the appropriate people.
7. Metamodel for the Management of Sharable Data
Paul Hawes is finalizing the metamodel and its dictionary. At the February meeting of X3L8, it was determined that this version is so substantially changed, that it should be sent out again for public review.
We discussed feedback to the metamodel from EPA and Census registry development efforts. This lead to a discussion of the reusability of value domains and conceptual domains. We find changing the value domain to an "administered" component may facilitate management of this information. We discuss the possibility of using a construct similar to our "data composite" to represent data groups (such as address) and to represent "derived data" (such as "variance"), which may require manipulation of several data elements. It may be that we could modify the "data composite" structure of the metamodel to handle all of these cases. We also discussed the need to time stamp values in the value domain. Doug Mann agreed to take over the editorship of the metamodel. He will handle whatever needs to be done to prepare for public review the material Paul turns over to him. This may include some possible refinements to deal with the issues raised in the meeting today.
Joe Leahy and Dan Gillman raised some issues that are arising in the course of their development efforts. We discuss potential resolutions to the issues. There is a new release of the Environmental Data Registry on the WWW at www.epa.gov/edr. It has a much nicer look and feel.
We added three issues and our tentative resolutions to the metamodel issues list.
It was generally accepted that it would be good to have a session in which we look at some examples of the better metadata in the registry to see if L8 members think that we have "got it right".
8. Date standard, X3.30:
Phong Ngo reported that the public review period for the standard has ended. No comments were received. The next step is to receive the pre-edited version from ANSI. L8 is to review this and prepare a final version. Then X3L8 votes (letter/email) to send it to the National Committee for Information Technology Standards (NCITS, formerly X3), which conducts a six-week ballot. Upon approval, NCITS sends it to ANSI for publication.
9. Time standard
Phong Ngo reported that he attended the March meeting of NCITS. The group agreed to the L8 proposal to combine two standards, X3.51, Representation of Universal time, and X3.43, Local Time of Day, into a single revised time standard. L8 will now complete the draft for the new standard and will then ballot the draft to approve it for circulation for public review.
Brent Archinal made comments on the current draft. He is also providing material to the editor for an informative annex. The material describes Universal time, leap seconds, and other concepts related to the standard. This should facilitate understanding the standard, for example the allowance of 60 or 61 seconds in a minute. The informative material also names sources where it is possible to get a correct value of UTC time in order to set clocks.
10. Definitions
We discussed definitions in the various L8 and SC14 standards documents. This is a matter that Paul Hawes raised many times. Now that Part 1 and the Metamodel are nearing completion (which helps to solidify the usage of terms), it is important to resolve problems in definitions. Dan Gillman raised the issue of discrepancies between the definitions between documents. Some of these have been noted in previous versions of Part 1. Doug Mann has made a new list of words with multiple and inconsistent definitions. He will update that list with the material in the metamodel expected from Paul Hawes. Doug will also check for possible relevant ISO and ANSI definitions and will include them where they seem useful. Doug will update the list and put it on the FTP/Web server and send it out by email. We will put the topic on a future SIG agenda for resolution.
We struggled for some time with two terms, "property" and "attribute". While in a loose sense these terms could mean the same thing, we make a distinction between them in Part 1. In previous parts, "Attribute" is defined as "A characteristic of an object or entity". This could also be a definition for "Property". However, the term "property" is used more restrictively than "attribute" in Part 1. A suggested definition for "property" in Part 1 is: "A characteristic of an object class or entity. "Property" does not denote any particular representation."
11. February meeting reports
Doug Mann prepared a report of the X3L8 Plenary and X3L8 SIG February meetings. These are now on the L8 FTP/Web site.
X3L8 SIG meeting 9 AM, April 10 & 11, 1997, at NIST Administration Building, Lecture Rm. C
Directions to NIST North: NIST North is Building 820. The address of this building is 820 West Diamond Avenue. Note that the building is located across the street from the main campus of NIST. Instead of turning onto Bureau Drive toward the main Gate of NIST, turn the opposite direction (North) onto Bureau Drive and take the second possible right turn to get to the NIST North building, The building has the name "NIST" on it in large letters. (From Interstate 270, driving North, take Exit 10, which loops under the freeway, and then turn RIGHT at the first stop light--this is the intersection of West Diamond Avenue and Bureau drive.)
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X3L8 documents, including this meeting report, are available via Anonymous FTP from speckle.ncsl.nist.gov. Log in as anonymous, use your email address for a password, Change directory to X3L8 (X3L8 in lowercase letters) and check the "readme" file for details. Many of the documents are also listed on the X3L8 Home Page http://www.lbl.gov/~olken/X3L8