Report of September X3L8 Special Interest Group Meeting

Meeting Report

National Committee for Information Technology Standards, L8, Special Interest Group

Held at the National Institute of Standards and Technology

September 25 & 26, 1997

Attendees:Bruce Bargmeyer, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Bruce Barrow, Department of Defense

Phil Diamond, Veterans Administration

Larry Fitzwater, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Dan Gillman, Bureau of Census

Becky Harris, Department of Defense

Henry Heffernan, EDPNS

Michael Huhns, University of South Carolina

William H. Kenworthey, Jr., Self

Chris E. Kyaff, NIST

Douglas Mann, Battelle

Judith Newton, National Institute of Standards and Technology

Phong Ngo, Science Applications International Corporation

Burton Parker, Paladin Integration Engineering

Dan Schneider, Department of Justice

Andy Schoka, MITRETEK

Judith Newton and Dan Gillman chaired the meetings. The following reports the issues raised and decisions made:

1. Discussion of work underway in AIIM

Dan Schneider, Chair of Standards Committee C22 of the Association for Information and Image Management International (AIIM) described the background and work of this committee. AIIM is accredited by ANSI and is also a US TAG to ISO committees. AIIM has broad global participation. AIIM has a long history of standards development. An effort in recent years is to standardize metadata relating to data and information interchanges. This is work underway in the C22 standards group under AIIM.. The work addresses the Reliability of Electronic Business Information (REBI). This includes metadata to establish the provenance of data "objects" (text, sounds, numbers, ...), without regard to content or language. The IT market is currently obsessed with digital signature issues. When those are solved, attention may turn back to keeping track of the origin of objects and and actions taken on objects. Dan, in his capacity as co-chair of the Interagency Electronic Records Management Working Group is now working with the Federal Webmasters Forum to create a "cookbook" for record keeping of Web site activities and information. The C22 work to date has clearly identified the need for metadata registries and therefore a common interest with the work of L8.

2. ISO/IEC 11179 and related SC 14 standards projects (Now SC 32 projects)

Dan Gillman said that the changes to Part 1 (resolution of ballot comments) will be complete by the end of next week. He will forward the finished document to Ronny Elofsson to send out for final CD ballot.

Bruce Bargmeyer reported that Part 2 passed its JTC1 CD ballot. No comments were received on the ballots, but some were received in email messages. These comments are editorial. The group agreed that minor edits should be made. A final version (in strike-out form) will be sent out. If there are no objections, it will be sent, with appropriate comment resolution documentation, for final CD balloting.

Judith Newton reported that she sent an electronic copy of the Data Value Domain standard proposal to Ronny Elofsson to be sent out for CD ballot. Ronny indicated that he has what he needs to send it out.

3. ANSI X3.50 Representations for U.S. Customary, SI and Other Units to be Used in Systems with Limited Character Sets

We discussed this standard, which is coming up for five-year review. Two specialists joined us for this discussion: Bruce Barrow, DoD, the Chair of IEEE Standards Coordinating Committee 14 (quantities, units and letter symbols), and Chris Kyaff, NIST, Secretary of IEC TC 25, Quantities & Units and Their Letter Symbols. We discussed the work done in this area by the IEEE, IEC TC 25 and ISO TC 12, Quanties, Units, Symbols and Conversion. For example, the IEEE develops a standard for SI units. The L8 standard (X3.50) specifies how to record the units in systems with limited character sets. E.g., the Greek characters Omega (Ohm) and lowercase Mu (micro) are not available in standard ASCII. The IEEE recently published the American National Standard for SI, Quantities and Units. IEEE will make a proposal about X3.50 at the next L8 meeting. In essence, the proposal is expected to be that the IEEE take over this standard. L8 would like to work together with IEEE to enable the standard for Information Technology. This includes how to record the SI units in a metadata registry.

4. ISO/IEC JTC 1 Issues

Bruce Bargmeyer reported on the JTC 1 meeting held in Ottawa. SC 14 is now merged with SC 30 and parts of SC 21. The new Technical Direction is called SC 32, Database Management Services. Over the next year we will work with the others to form the new committee. In October, a meeting will be held, in conjunction with an SC30 meeting in Paris, to initiate planning for the new SC.

The US has agreed to act as the interim secretariat for SC 32 and SC 33. Marisa Topping was appointed this week as the interim secretariat for SC 32. She will meet with Ronny Elofsson in Paris to begin an orderly transition to the new Subcommittee structure

Bruce also reported on the JTC1 & SC 14 sponsored Joint Workshop on Metadata Registration. The report is on the Web at http://www.lbl.gov/~olken/EPA/Workshop JTC1 will send out a letter ballot on the Resolution addressed to JTC1.

5. Z39.50

Dan Gilman raised the issue that the Z39.50 community has a need to register data elements. In the April 1998 time frame we will have an opportunity to talk to representatives of the Z39.50 community about our data registry standards.

6. Date and Time standard

Burt Parker and Phong Ngo reported the status of the Date standard. NCITS sent out a ballot for the Date standard. The ballot passed, with some negative votes. Committee responses to the negative vote comments have been prepared and sent out for committee ballot.

Burt reported the status of the Time standard. All edits have been made, including the preliminary edits by the ANSI senior technical editor except development of a forward to the standard. Burt asked for suggestions for the content of the forward. He will draft a forward and place the new version of the Time standard on the L8 FTP site by Monday, 29 September at which time Phong with put out a ballot for committee draft.

7. Health Care data registry.

Doug Man demonstrated an initial version of a data registry that he has developed for the field of healthcare. He drew upon existing implementations of ISO 11179 as a basis for his development work. This is an initial step toward engaging the very large healthcare informatics area.

8. DPAns X3.285 Metamodel for the Management of Sharable Data

Doug Mann presented a new version of the metamodel. He has included representations in Modified Chen (Entity Relationship), IDF1x, NIAM (Object Role Modeling) and Unified Modeling Language (UML). Most of the issues are now resolved or defered for later consideration. We made some edits to the form and content of the document.

We agreed to give members a two week period for public review. We will then send a version to the CDIF committee with our recommendation that it is a work in progress that could serve as the data representation subject area for CDIF. We understand that CDIF is currently engaging development of a data representation subject area.

It was agreed that we will put the metamodel on the X3L8 plenary October agenda for approval to submit it for NCITS public review.

We also discussed the potential for taking this work to the ISO level for fast track or other action.

There was a general expression of accolades and applause for the superb work that Doug Mann has accomplished in this draft. We are all impressed by the excellent product that he has produced.

9. Definitions

Doug Mann presented a paper showing the usage of terms throughout our standards. There are inconsistencies. Some of the inconsistencies are inconsequential and need not be addressed. Some inconsistencies are due to advancements in the Metamodel and therefore should remain. There are some inconsistencies that can be resolved with the drafts in progress. Dan Gillman and Doug Mann will work together on terminology issues for Part 1. Doug Mann, Mike Huhns and Bruce Bargmeyer will work together on definitions for Part 2.

10. Future meeting schedule

X3L8 SIG and Plenary meetings 9 AM, October 22-24, 1997, Battelle

X3L8 SIG and Plenary meetings, February 18-20, 1988 at ITI

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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). Read the "readme" file for a listing of filenames and a brief description of each file. Many of the X3L8 and SC14 documents are also listed on the X3L8 Home Page http://www.lbl.gov/~olken/X3L8