Meeting Report
National Committee for Information Technology Standards (NCITS)
L8, Data Representation, Special Interest Group
October 21-23, 1998 at NIST in Gaithersburg, MD
Attendees:
Bruce Bargmeyer Environmental Protection Agency
Jim Carpenter Bureau of Labor Statistics
Eliot Christian United States Geological Survey
Tom Culpepper 3M
Larry Fitzwater Environmental Protection Agency
Sheila Frank Health Care Finance Administration
Len Gallagher National Institute of Standards and Technology
Dan Gillman Bureau of the Census
Michael Gorman Whitemarsh
Judy Griffin HAZMED
Henry Heffernan National Institutes of Health
Pat Heinig Department of Energy
William H Kenworthey, Jr. Self
Tom Kurihara National Institute of Standards and Technology
Judith Newton National Institute of Standards and Technology
Douglas Mann Battelle
Robert Mayes Health Care Finance Administration
Phong Ngo Science Applications International Corporation
John Ryabik Marasco Newton Group
Genevieve Speier Health Care Finance Administration
Linda Spencer Environmental Protection Agency
Glenn M. Sperle Department of Defense/Health Affairs
Dan Gillman and Judith Newton chaired the L8 full SIG meeting.
1. Project meetings for New Work Item Study Period
The first two and a half days were comprised of meetings of project groups working on the study period for the New Work Item (NWI) proposals. Each project group was asked to address the following items:
a. Discuss the topics included in the NWI and seek agreement; tutorials may be helpful for some topics.
b. Refine the written description of the NWI – result: produce a document
c. Produce a draft Work Plan - establish the anticipated tasks necessary to accomplish the NWI, schedule tasks, determine mode of operation – result: produce a document
d. Establish an approach to engage international participation
e. Develop plans for the Open Forum Panel on the NWI topic, revise the text for the panel as found in the current draft of the Open Forum call for participation – result: produce a document
f. Draft a first version of a standard – result: produce a document (this is an ongoing effort)
g. Select a U.S. (co-)leader for the project
Reports from each project group are below, in Item 7
2. National and international participation in meetings
Most of each L8 Special Interest Group meeting is focused on the international work that is part of the work plan for SC 32/WG 2. We would like to engage international participants (as well as participants across the US) in this effort at every step along the way. It was agreed that we would try to open the meetings and the work to the broadest extent possible. We propose several means to do this:
a. Develop a website for each project
We will post the description of the work, the tasks to be performed, a list of participants, drafts of the standard and related submissions.
We would like to use the WG 2 website developed by Joe Christensen in Australia and will try to work out some arrangement for moving document to that site. The L8 FTP/HTTP website provides a handy place for dropping off documents. The URL for this site is: http://sdct-sunsrv1.ncsl.nist.gov/~ftp/l8/sc32wg2/projects/
There is a subdirectory for each project. Participants are and project leaders are invited to place documents at this location using anonymous FTP. The documents may be viewed there also.
b. Develop an email reflector for each project
People can sign-up for any or all of the reflector lists.
If anyone, anywhere indicates an interest in calling in to the project meeting, then we will set up a speakerphone for that meeting. If there are several callers, a teleconference dial-in number will be set up for each project.
We can set up multi-point videoconferences (VTC) for the project meetings. Anyone with compatible equipment could join the project meeting via VTC. We used VTC equipment for the XML project at this meeting and after straightening some technokinks at the start, it worked well.
We may be able to use some real-time collaboration software during meetings (e.g., netmeeting) and possibly discussion databases for ongoing dialogue (e.g. Domino). We will test these where there is interest.
f. Distribute meeting reports widely
Send reports of the L8 SIG meetings to the WG 2 informal reflector.
If anyone can think of other ways to facilitate national and international collaboration, please make a proposal.
3. Report of formative 11179 implementers’ consortium
Glen Sperle reported on the formation of a consortium of implementers of 11179 metadata registries. The group has met twice and has meetings planned the day before the November and December L8 meetings. The participants are interested in working together on metadata registry implementations. At the most recent meeting, nearly 30 people attended from government agencies and contractors. Glen is drafting a charter. Meeting reports and a draft charter will be made available on the web. It is expected that the consortium will provide mutual support in developing and maintaining metadata registries and registry content. It is also intended to stimulate commercial implementations of ISO/IEC 11179. The next meeting is to be held at NIST North, room 145, on November 17, 1998, 2-5 PM.
4. SC 32/WG2 Open Forum
We discussed preparations for the Open Forum, to be held February 16 – 19, 1998 in Washington D.C. Jim Carpenter offered use of the BLS Conference Center for both the Open Forum and the WG 2 meetings on the preceding week. This is an excellent Conference facility and we are very pleased to accept the offer. A draft call for participation in the Open Forum was circulated for review and several comments were received. Each project group was asked to address preparations for the Open Forum, including preparation of a description of the panel session relating to the NWI project. A revised call will be prepared and distributed. A website is being set up and support staff are working on preparation of materials such as hotels, maps, agendas, general information, participant registration, etc. A notice will be sent out as soon as the website has useful information. We are anxious to get the SC 32/WG 2 informal reflector set up, so that we can use it to distribute information and draft material about the Open Forum. John Ryabik of the Marasco Newton Group, under contract to EPA, is supporting preparations Report small group progress to full group
5. Review of related work by NASA
NASA provided a copy of the Draft Recommendation for Space Data System Standards, Data Entity Dictionary Specification Language, Draft Red Book for review by the L8 participants. Doug Mann will take a first cut at this and will communicate his findings to NASA and L8.
6. L8 work on standards
Units of measure and dimensionality were raised as potential work that could be included in a New Work Item. This work could also be accomplished with other committees (ISO and IEEE) that have the lead on units of measure. This could be undertaken as an IT enabilization effort (recasting paper standards into a form that can be registered in an electronic metadata registry and used by software). We received input on this issue from Glen Sperle and other members, but no one has stepped forward to lead the effort, yet. Tom Culpepper noted that the OMG is doing work related to this issue.
7. Reports from project groups
7.1 Revise ISO/IEC 11179, Part 3 (five-year revision) with amendments to other parts of 11179 to make all parts consistent [Joe Christensen editor]
This is already an approved SC 32 project. The objective is to update ISO/IEC 11179, Specification and Standardization of Data Elements, Part 3, Basic Attributes. This work is the result of the 5-year review of Part 3. This project will also develop corrigenda or changes in the other parts of ISO/IEC 11179 to make the separately developed parts consistent between themselves and to make them consistent with the revised Part 3. The recently completed ANS X3.285 incorporates virtually all of 11179, Part 3, extends the list of attributes, and presents the information in the form of a model. It includes an informative annex with translations to several popular modeling notations. X3.285 is to serve as a basis for rapidly updating Part 3. Doug Mann will serve as the lead for the US work on this project. Joe Christensen, in Australia, is the WG 2 editor for this project.
Joe Christensen sent a message from Australia describing the state of the work. He is
now drafting a revision to circulate informally. He envisages that this will be in the form of a revised draft of 11179/3 and a list for discussion purposes of corrigenda to other parts arising out of X3.285. Please let Joe know ASAP, if there are specific issues arising out of reference implementations that you would like to address in this revision. Joe has some issues of his own, which he'll apply in a "non-parochial manner" to the revision. Joe also noted some good news - the National Health Information knowledgebase won the 1998 DAMA Australia Recognition Award.
Work is underway in the US to compare current implementations to the X3.285 metamodel to see if implementation experiences call for any changes. Doug Mann and Robb Beal are doing this for the Environmental Data Registry (EDR). For example, some extensions were necessary in order to register EDI message sets in the EDR. Some of the other project groups have also suggested that changes may be generated by their work. However, the Object Extensions group requests a stable target model to use as the basis for their work. Therefore, any suggestions for changes should be made soon.
Next Steps include recruitment of national and international participation, development of a draft document, and organization of a panel for the Open forum.
7.2 Object interface extensions to ISO/IEC 11179
The Object Extensions group met for a full day on 21 October 1998 and for 2 hours on 23 October 1998.
Present:
Bill Kenworthey - Self
Bob Mayes - HCFA rmayes@hcfa.gov
Eliot Christian - U.S. Geological Survey echristi@usgs.gov
Glenn M. Sperle - DoD/Health Affairs glenn.sperle@tma.osd.mil
Ky Ostergaard - SAIC/EPA Contractor ostergaard.ky@epa.gov
Tom Culpepper - 3M tcculpepper@wpmail.code3.com
A discussion ensued about the scope of this NWI. It was recommended that this NWI would focus upon an interface to a metadata registry and not embark upon defining behaviors on the data elements registered in 11179 metadata registries.
The major emphasis was placed on putting together the following:
--Discuss the topics included in the NWI.
--Refine the written description of the NWI.
--Document created.
--Establish the anticipated tasks necessary to accomplish the NWI.
--Document created.
--Establish an approach to engage international participation.
--Document created.
--Lay out a work plan.
--Document created.
--Develop plans for the Open Forum Panel on the NWI topic.
--Attempt to draft a first version of a standard.
--Preliminary document created.
--Select a US editor for the project.
The focus of the second session was to begin the alignment of Use Case with the UML model of the x3.285.
Documents resulting from discussion of the above topics project are available at:
http://sdct-sunsrv1.ncsl.nist.gov/~ftp/l8/sc32wg2/projects/11179obj/
Documents available on the 11179 object interface project website include the NWI proposal, tasks, the Work Plan, and the minutes of this meeting.
Tom Culpepper is the leader for the US work on this project.
7.3 XML extensions for ISO/IEC 11179
Summary notes on meeting held Thursday, October 22 at NIST in Rockville MD and LBNL in Berkeley CA
Participants:
at LBNL:
Frank Olken and John McCarthy
at NIST:
Bruce Bargmeyer, EPA
Shawn Jones, SAIC (EPA Contractor)
Len Gallagher, NIST
Tom Culpepper, 3M
Bob Mayes, HCFA
Elizabeth Fong, NIST
Phong Ngo, SAIC
Glen Sperle, DOD Health Care
The meeting began via videoconference at approximately 9am EDT
(6am PDT). It continued after lunch via teleconference.
This project involves development of a set of XML metadata tags based on XML-Data and/or the XML/Resource Description Framework (RDF). This would make ISO/IEC 11179 useful in the new XML enabled web technologies. Another objective in this effort will be to enable metadata interchange among metadata registries. A third objective is to enable access to metadata registries from XML based web pages, including pages generated from database queries. A fourth objective is to enable XML applications (such as XML-EDI) to directly access metadata registries. In order to accomplish these objectives, requirements will be generated for XML syntax and schema work underway in the World Wide Web Consortium. We are working on arrangements for liaison with the relevant W3C workgroups. Frank Olken and John McCarthy are leading the US work on this NWI.
Documents about this project, including the documents resulting from the topics discussed at this meeting are available at:
http://sdct-sunsrv1.ncsl.nist.gov/~ftp/l8/sc32wg2/projects/11179xml/
Documents at the XML site include the NWI proposal, an attachment to the NWI proposal and the Work Plan for this project.
Frank Olken and John McCarthy are leading the US work on this project.
7.4 Extend ISO/IEC 11179 for Complex data
The purpose of this New Work Item is to extend ISO/IEC 11179 to support the specification of complex data. Many organizations produce data for internal or external use. As a result, information that describes that data (metadata) must be readily available. With the advent of electronic access to data through the Internet and other media, the metadata must be electronically accessible, too. Metadata registries are deployed to manage and organize the metadata, and standards such as ISO/IEC 11179 address the content and basic functions of those registries.
Organizations around the world are implementing metadata registries based in the framework described in ISO/IEC 11179. However, the framework has limitations that constrain the usefulness of the registries. The proposed New Work Item will remedy some of these limitations.
We talked about the scope of the NWI and determined that complex data, as we wanted it defined, was different from multimedia data. We chose to remove the mention of multimedia.
We defined complex data and discussed the scope of the NWI. Other related issues such as data groups and data sets came up. We haven't determined whether they are in scope yet.
Much of the discussion focused on different kinds of complex data, especially derivation types. We discussed the need to describe derivations and link the derived data elements to their constituents. We need to determine what other kinds of complex data there are besides derived and groups. We need to figure out exactly what a data group is.
We determined a preliminary schedule for completion of the project and selected a U.S. leader. We spoke a little about who will participate in the complex data panel at the Open Forum.
Documents about the Complex Data project, including the documents resulting from the topics discussed at this meeting are available at:
http://sdct-sunsrv1.ncsl.nist.gov/~ftp/l8/sc32wg2/projects/11179cmx/
Documents at the Complex Data website include the NWI proposal, an attachment to the NWI proposal and a document covering details of this project.
Dan Gillman is the leader for the US work on this project.
7.5. ISO/IEC 11179 Metamodel issues Not Elsewhere Classified
Doug Mann identified two outstanding items: Units/dimensionality and registering generic/core/reference data vs. application data. We received some input from Glen Sperle on units, but have not yet coalesced a group around the topic. Several members suggested that the second topic, about levels of abstraction, was previously identified as part of the registry content item. Therefore, the participants interested in levels of abstraction met with the Registry Content project group.
Documents about this project, including the documents resulting from the topics discussed at this meeting are available at:
http://sdct-sunsrv1.ncsl.nist.gov/~ftp/l8/sc32wg2/projects/11179xtnd/
Documents at the website include the NWI proposal and an attachment to the NWI proposal.
7.6 Technical Report on ISO/IEC 11179 Metadata Registry Content
The exchange of metadata between ISO/IEC 11179 metadata registries depends not only on registry software that conforms to the standard, but also on metadata contents that are compatible between registries. While the 11179 standard has general coverage for data element specification and registration, there are pragmatic issues pertaining to populating the registries with content. Based on the experiences of organizations that are implementing the standard, a technical report to explore content issues could help current and future users. This could also possibly be an implementation guide.
This group met the full day of October 22 and the morning of October 23, 1998.
There was substantial discussion about the potential scope of this project. A list of tasks was developed and preparations were made for the Open Forum panel on this project.
Documents about this project, including the documents resulting from the topics discussed at this meeting are available at:
http://sdct-sunsrv1.ncsl.nist.gov/~ftp/l8/sc32wg2/projects/11179content/
Documents at the website include the NWI proposal and an attachment to the NWI proposal and a Work Plan for this project.
7.7 Terminology extensions for ISO/IEC 11179
Participants at this meeting:
Bruce Bargmeyer
Sheila Frank
Len Gallagher
Judy Griffin
Henry Heffernan
Tom Kurihara
Pat Heinig
Linda Spencer
This work will focus on extending the 11179 to better accommodate semantic management of concepts and the terms by which concepts are referenced. An important foundation for semantics management is the ability to specify concepts and to associate the each concept with the linguistic expressions (terms or unintelligent identifiers) used to name or reference the concept. Concepts may be expressed as definitions and each linguistic expression (term, identifier) for the each concept should be in a context. For example, the context for a term may be a specific language (French, English, …) or a specific scientific discipline (chemistry, materials engineering, …). Once concepts and terms are specified, they may be organized a variety of structured sets such as controlled vocabularies, keywords, data element values, data element components, thesauri, themes, topic trees, taxonomies, or ontologies. Each of these structured sets of concepts/terminology can be deployed in various technologies. For example, topic trees and thesauri can be deployed in search engines to facilitate discovery of relevant documents and data, ontologies can be deployed in intelligent information services (request brokers, query agents, resource agents, etc.), and data elements can be deployed in DBMS technology. Extensions to 11179 are required to establish a means for specifying concepts and terms and to establish a means for organizing concepts/terminology into structured sets. Reference implementations will be used to demonstrate the practical utility of the proposed standards and technology.
At the meeting we discussed the scope, identified tasks, prepared a draft work plan with assignments, and prepared for the Open Forum panel on Terminology.
Documents about this project, including the documents resulting from the topics discussed at this meeting are available at:
http://sdct-sunsrv1.ncsl.nist.gov/~ftp/l8/sc32wg2/projects/11179term/term-home.htm
Documents at the website include the NWI proposal and an attachment to the NWI proposal and a Work Plan with assignments for this project.
Bruce Bargmeyer is currently leading the US work on this NWI.
10. Future meeting schedule
November:
11/18/1998 9 AM – 5 PM NIST Administration Building Lecture Room D – Joint L8
Plenary with T2
11/19/1998 9 AM – 5 PM NIST Administration Building Lecture Room C, B111, B113 &
Employee Lounge– NWI & other topic meetings
11/20/1998 9 AM – 5 PM NIST Administration Building Lecture Room C & D, B111, &
B113 – NWI & other topic meetings
11/18/1998 No Dining Room
11/19/1998 Dining Room A & C
11/20/1998 Dining Room A
December:
12/10/1998 9 AM - 5 PM NIST Administration Building Lecture Room E, Rooms B111
& B113 (LR E is located in the basement of Administration Building) – SIG meetings. Meet first in Lecture Room E.
12/11/1998 9 AM - 5 PM NIST Administration Building Lecture Room E, Rooms B111
& B113 12/10/1998
12/10 - 11/1998 Dining Room C
February:
2/8 - 12/1999 BLS Conference Center - SC 32/WG 2 Plenary and editing meetings
2/16-19/1999 BLS Conference Center - SC 32/WG 2 Open Forum on Metadata Registries
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Directions to NIST Administration Building: From Interstate 270, driving North, take Exit 10. The exit takes you under the freeway. Take a left into the NIST campus at the first stoplight. The Administration Building is the largest building on the campus. Visitor parking is in the large parking lot in front of the Admin Building. Other parking lots nearby are reserved for permit holders.
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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NCITS L8 documents, including this meeting report, are available via Anonymous FTP from sdct-sunsrv1.ncsl.nist.gov. Change directory to l8 (L8 in lowercase letters) and check the "readme" file for details. The FTP site is also available on the web at: http://sdct-sunsrv1.ncsl.nist.gov/~ftp/l8 Many of the documents are also listed on the L8 Home Page. The URL is http://www.lbl.gov/~olken/X3L8". If you have questions or comments on this document send email to bargmeyer.bruce@epamail.epa.gov.