Meeting Report

National Committee for Information Technology Standards (NCITS)

L8, Data Representation, Special Interest Group Meetings

June 24 & 25, 1999 at NIST in Gaithersburg, MD

Attendees:

Bruce Bargmeyer Environmental Protection Agency

Jaime Bendicoff Health Care Finance Administration

Jim Carpenter Bureau of Labor Statistics

Joe Christensen Australian Institute of Health and Welfare

Eliot Christian United States Geological Survey

Larry Fitzwater Environmental Protection Agency

John Garrett Raytheon/NASA

Ray Gates Manulife Financial, Canada

Dan Gillman Bureau of the Census

Kathleen Gundry Science Applications International Corporation

Henry Heffernan

Jennifer Jones Health Care Finance Administration

Shawn Jones Science Applications International Corporation

Henry Heffernan EDPNS

Elizabeth Fong National Institute for Standards and Technology

Judy Griffin HAZMED

William H Kenworthey, Jr. Self

Theresa Krol Health Care Finance Administration

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

Burt Parker Paladin Integration Engineering

Dan Sawyer National Air and Space Administration

Andy Schoka MITRETEK

Genevieve Speier Health Care Finance Administration

Linda Spencer Environmental Protection Agency

Judith Newton chaired the meetings.

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. 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. We can phone out to international parties, who wish to participate in the meeting. For example, we originate the call to Joe Christensen at his home, in the middle of the Australian night, so that he can participate.

We also used "net meeting" as a means of making documents visible to persons who dial in.

Documents, such as the metamodel, which we project on a screen in the meeting room, can be viewed simultaneously to anyone logged in to Net Meeting. LBNL provided the net meeting server site. Net Meeting is free software distributed with Internet Explorer. All are invited to both phone in and use Net Meeting, if they cannot attend in person.

Report of meeting:

1. General Topics

1.1 Dan Gillman covered a number of L8 items. He discussed issues about current ballots and noted problems in determining which are the active NCITS T2 projects that should be brought into L8 (he needs response from someone in T2). Dan announced that the call for L8 International Representative (IR) has closed and that Frank Farance is now the IR for L8.

1.2 We discussed reorganization of the L8 web site. We will have an L8 site and a SC32/WG2 site. The later will incorporate material from the Australia WG 2 web site and we will thus centralize all content in one place. A new directory structure will be designed and relevant files will be copied into the new directory. The structure and contents of the current L8 site will not be changed, so as not to break links that people may have. After some time (couple years?), the old L8 directory structure will be eliminated. As discussed at the Matsue meeting, Australia will discontinue their WG 2 website after the new WG 2 web site is operational. In the process of designing the new site, we will develop a document register as requested at the Matsue meeting, and will explore the inclusion of some type of email discussion group software to help people follow the L8 email discussion threads.

2. January 2000 Open Forum on Metadata Registries

The next Open Forum on Metadata registries will be held January 17 - 21, 2000 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.

Karen Ilardo, Lesa Faris and Cordell Green from MarascoNewton Group (MNG) are making the arrangements for the Open Forum under contract from EPA. Lesa and Cordel described some of their activities and invited suggestions from the meeting participants. They will be contacting potential speakers and will handle registration.

Bruce Bargmeyer gave a brief update on the Open Forum agenda, which was distributed as an early draft. Several comments were received. The organizers for the "tracks" to be held on the Thursday and Friday of the Open Forum are:

Track 1- Environment, with emphasis on environmental cleanup
Organizers: Bruce Bargmeyer, Linda Spencer

Track 2 - Health Care
Organizers: Robert Mayes, Genevieve Speier

Track 3 - Statistics
Organizers: Dan Gillman, Jim Carpenter

Track 4 - Emerging Technologies
Organizer: Bruce Bargmeyer

Track 5 - Terminology
Organizers: Linda Spencer, Stu Gagnon, Harold Solbrig

The organizers are asked to get input to Bruce and Karen Ilardo quickly, so that a revised draft agenda can be circulated at the end of next week. That draft will be circulated to the SC32/WG2 email list for comments.

3. Metamodel discussion - revision of ISO/IEC 11179, Part 3

Almost all of the meeting was dedicated to progressing the revision of Part 3, particularly the metamodel. Substantial progress was made and it was agreed to similarly focus the next meeting on the metamodel. At the next meeting, we will work on defining the minimum set of "mandatory" attributes. It is hoped that we will wind up with a rather short list as in the present version of Part 3.

Although there has long been an FTP/HTTP directory for the Part 3 revision, see below for URL, we are struggling to respond to the request at Matsue for issuing document numbers. This will take a while to get right. We have used document names to this point. The names help to identify the content, but are not "document numbers". We are exploring some sort of "standing document" solution. At the Matsue, meeting it was agreed to create an issues list for the revision of Part 3. Previous to the Matsue meeting, Doug Mann had written up several issues and placed them in the "proposals" FTP directory for the revision effort.:

www.nist.gov/L8/sc32wg2/projects/11179p3r/proposals. Doug's issues have document names ranging from Proposal-DM00.doc to Proposal-DM10.doc plus Proposal-JK01.doc Based on the Matsue discussion, Joe Christensen prepared a list of several issues and is adding new ones. Joe's list of issues is now also in the "proposals" directory these are named 11179-3 WD Issues 11.doc through 11179-3 WD Issues 21.doc. Canadian participants reviewed Doug Mann's issues and made comments on the issues before the meeting. The Canadian comments are in the same directory with names CAN320044R2.doc or (.pdf) through CAN320054R1.doc. At this meeting, it was proposed that all issues be gathered into a single document and that we add two items to those already contained in Joe Christensen's issues. The new items are "committee proposed resolution" and Status (which would have the values: open, proposed, closed).

With Ray Gates on the telephone, we reviewed Doug Mann's proposals and the Canadian Comments. We tentatively resolved the issues and Ray will update the issues to show the new proposed resolutions agreed to by the group. Doug Mann will make the proposed changes to the metamodel, so that all can see the impact of the proposed revisions.

Shawn Jones gave a presentation, raising metamodel issues based on experiences in creating a reference implementation. Doug Mann recorded the issues. The group considered the issues and proposed resolutions to most of them. Doug Mann will write up the issues and resolutions in the agreed upon format. Doug will try to provide a revised model and the issues documents before the next meeting, which is only a few weeks away.

A high priority task is to define the minimum set of attributes that are necessary to be conformant with ISO/IEC 11179. Doug Mann will also try to prepare and circulate a document showing the minimum set of mandatory attributes as shown in the metamodel. This will form the basis for the July meeting. We are beginning to see profiles of the attributes in 11179 emerge. The metamodel specifies considerable detail. Different application areas are defining the minimum set of 11179 attributes that are necessary for that area in order to exchange uniform sets of metadata. What we will attempt to do is to define a core set of attributes that are essential to be conformant with ISO/IEC 11179.

After preparation of a new working draft based on the Matsue and other comments, the revision will be sent out for CD ballot as agreed at the Matsue meeting.

4. Projects

Work is progressing on the other projects, based on input received at the Matsue meeting. The results will be sent out by the editors.

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 all of 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.

If you have comments on any of the documents, please send the comments to the email reflector for the for SC32/WG2 sc32wg2@nist.gov.

The projects and the URLs for their web sites are listed below:

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]

The URL for material relating to this project is:

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

4.2 Object Specifications for ISO/IEC 11179

The URL for this project is:

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

4.3 XML extensions for ISO/IEC 11179

Documents about this project 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

Documents about this:

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

4.7 Terminology extensions for ISO/IEC 11179

Documents about this project are available at:

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

5. Future meetings

Note that we invite the broadest possible participation in moving the projects forward. There is always a dial-up line to the meeting room. The numbers are sent out in advance. We can also dial out to national and international numbers. Please send a message to Judith Newton (jnewton@nist.gov), if you want us to call you. We are attempting to use "Net Meeting" as a way of making the model and other material visible to all remote participants. Please let us know if there is any way in which we can facilitate your participation.

The following are the meeting dates and locations for future meetings:

1/24 - 28/2000 SC32 and WG 2 meetings, Santa Fe New Mexico, USA

* This room is located in the basement of the Admin Bldg.

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

--------------------

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.)

-------------------

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