Meeting Report

National Committee for Information Technology Standards (NCITS)

L8, Data Representation, Special Interest Group Meetings

March 17 & 18, 1999 at NIST in Gaithersburg, MD

Attendees:

Bruce Bargmeyer Environmental Protection Agency

Jim Carpenter Bureau of Labor Statistics

Patrick Cassidy Self

Joe Christensen Australian Institute of Health and Welfare

Eliot Christian United States Geological Survey

Larry Fitzwater Environmental Protection Agency

Dan Gillman Bureau of the Census

Judy Griffin HAZMED

Henry Heffernan EDPNS

Pat Heinig Department of Energy

William H Kenworthey, Jr. Self

Judith Newton National Institute of Standards and Technology

Douglas Mann Battelle

John McCarthy Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Phong Ngo Science Applications International Corporation

Frank Olken Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Ky Ostergaard Science Applications International Corporation

Burton G. Parker Paladin Integration Engineering

Genevieve Speier Health Care Finance Administration

Judith Newton chaired the full SIG meeting, held at the start of the first day. Project leaders chaired the meeting for each project.

A teleconference bridge was available each of the meeting days for national and international dial-in calls. Teleconference numbers were sent out before the meetings and videoconference arrangements were made. The teleconference arrangements seemed to work fine. Work is still needed on the video conference arrangements. All persons, from any country, who are interested in the projects, are invited to call during the meetings. Anyone from outside the US, who wants to call in, should send a message to Judith Newton (jnewton@nist.gov) or call her at +1 301 975 3256 so that any special arrangements can be made.

Full SIG meeting:

1. Open Forum on ISO/IEC 11179 Metadata Registries

An Open Forum was held in February 1999 in conjunction with the SC 32/WG 2 meetings. About 90 people participated. Evaluation forms were passed around. It was well attended and the comments were quite positive. Presentations, lists of participants and other information is available at <www.nist.gov/L8/sc32wg2/openforum>.

The next Open Forum on ISO/IEC Metadata Registries will be held during the week of January 11, 2000 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. A request was made for volunteers to help plan the agenda and prepare the documents. The next Open Forum will focus on ISO/IEC 11179 as before, but will also include implementation tracks. The proposed schedule includes:

Optional tutorials, beginner and advanced

Implementations

Tracks:

Healthcare

Environment (especially hazardous waste cleanup)

Statistics (especially census)

Electronic Commerce/Electronic Data Interchange

Terminology

2. Preparations for WG 2 meetings in Matsue, Japan

Each of the projects is requested to make available the key documents about the project as far in advance of the Matsue meeting as possible. The work is expected to continue, but international members of WG 2 need to be able to review documents in advance. It is desired to do as much of the work by email as possible. The reflector addresses are as follows:

SC 32/WG 2 informal email reflector: sc32wg2-news@nist.gov

Object Specification 11179-objectspecification@nist.gov

11179-3 Revision 11179-part3@nist.gov

Registry Content 11179-registrycontent@nist.gov

Terminology 11179-terms@nist.gov

XML 11179-xml@nist.gov

To see if you are on any of the above lists, see: http://www.sdct.itl.nist.gov/~ftp/l8/maillist.txt

Note that to keep duplicate entry of names to a minimum, some lists refer to other lists, so you need to follow all references to see if you are on the list. E.g., the sc32wg2-news@nist.gov list sends the message to everyone on the l8-news@nist.gov list.

See the project meeting notes, below for links to the project sites where documents to be discussed in Matsue are being made available.

3. Project meetings

Two and a half days were spent on project meetings. The projects are part of an SC 32/WG 2 study period, which is preliminary to development of proposals for New Work Items that revise and extend ISO/IEC 11179. The projects relate to metadata registration and the functions of metadata registries. Project meetings lasted a full or half-day. The full group met for each project meeting (not concurrent meetings as in previous meetings).

There is a web accessible directory for each of the projects. Documents related to each project are being placed in the project directories. You can access the directories at

< ww.nist.gov/L8/sc32wg2/projects>.

Some of the projects have home pages that list or describe documents on the project website. See below for project level URLs.

Projects are requested to maintain the relevant documents on their project website. See each website for the reports and other project documents. The following lists each project and the URL for the project.

4.1 Revise ISO/IEC 11179, Part 3 (five-year revision) with amendments to other parts of 11179 to make all parts consistent [Joe Christensen, Australia, 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.

On the first and second days, we had a teleconference with Joe Christensen. The teleconferences began at 8:15 AM, before the regular meeting, since Joe is 16 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. Joe is working on revisions of ISO/IEC 11179 Part 3. We also met all day the second day to review the metamodel and to decide upon proposed changes. Doug Mann presented the metamodel and led the discussion of changes.

Documents about this project can be found at two sites. The WG 2 - Metadata website is:

http://metadata.aihw.gov.au/

A copy of the most recent draft is also available at:

http://sdct-sunsrv1.ncsl.nist.gov/~ftp/l8/sc32wg2/projects/11179p3r/

4.2 Object Specifications for ISO/IEC 11179

The Object Specification group did not meet. The report of previous meetings and related documents are available at:

http://sdct-sunsrv1.ncsl.nist.gov/~ftp/l8/sc32wg2/projects/11179obj/

4.3 XML extensions for ISO/IEC 11179

The project group met on March 18, 1999 via videoconference. This project involves development of a set of XML metadata tags for accessing 11179 metadata registry content and for import/export of registry content. This would make ISO/IEC 11179 useful in the new XML enabled web technologies. Collaborative efforts with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) have shifted from the Resource Description Framework working group to the XML-schema working group within the W3C.

Frank Olken and John McCarthy, the project leaders, proposed that we include the XML tags for the 11179 metadata registry as another notation in the Revised Part 3. This was agreed to be participants and by Joe Christensen, editor of the Part 3 revision. Frank and John will make suggestions for changes in the Part 3 document to accommodate this decision.

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/

4.4 Technical Report on ISO/IEC 11179 Metadata Registry Content

This project group met most of the day, March 17, 1999. 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.

Judith Newton presented a draft of the document and Lois Fritts presented new content. Lois is making some revisions and then Judy will incorporate Lois's material.

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/content-home.htm

4.7 Terminology extensions for ISO/IEC 11179

This group met briefly on March 17, 1999. This work focuses on extending the 11179 to better accommodate semantic management of concepts and the terms by which concepts are referenced. 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. Jim Carpenter led discussion of a revised draft document. With contributions from others, Jim will make a new version.

Documents about this project are available at:

http://sdct-sunsrv1.ncsl.nist.gov/~ftp/l8/sc32wg2/projects/11179term/term-home.htm

5. Future meeting schedule

Note that national and international participation is invited for these project meetings. A teleconference bridge is in place for all meetings. Anyone interested in participating is invited to call in. There is also a message number to dial, in case there is a problem with the conference telephone. We can also dial out to international numbers if this helps people to participate. All times below are Eastern Daylight Time.

Thursday, April 8:

8:15-9:00 Teleconference with Joe Christensen in Australia, Room NIST North 152

9:00-10:00 SIG Plenary, Room NIT North 152

10:00-12:30 Content Working Group

Lunch: Dining Room A

1:30-4:30 Terminology

Friday, April 9:

9:00-12:30 Objects Working Group - Room 501

Metamodel Revisions - Room 152

Lunch: Dining Room A

1:00-4:30 XML VTC in Room 145

Note: Judith Newton has scheduled the Objects and Metamodel topics in parallel;

however, if there is a strong feeling that these groups must meet in

series, we can always revise this agenda.

The teleconference number is 1-800-289-1392 - conference ID pass code is

#10979.

The number from Australia is:

1-800-121-293 - conference ID pass code #10979

Also, the number of the message telephone in Room 145 is +301-975-5096 and Room 152 is +301-975-5097.

5/21-28/98, Matsue Japan, SC 32 and SC 32/WG 2 meetings.

Here are the rooms reserved for the rest of 1999 for L8 related meetings at NIST.

Meetings begin at 9 AM and end at 5 PM, except for meetings during which we call Australia. Those meetings start at 8:15 to somewhat accommodate the time difference. The room times below are for room reservation purposes.

** This room is located in the NIST North Bldg.

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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