Meeting Report
National Committee for Information Technology Standards (NCITS)
L8, Data Representation, Special Interest Group Meeting on ISO/IEC 11179 Projects
October 7 & 8, 1999 at NIST in Gaithersburg, MD
Attendees:
Branch Archer AFMSA/HIRS (by phone)
Bruce Bargmeyer Environmental Protection Agency
Joe Christensen Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Australia (by phone)
Tommie Curtis Science Applications
International Corporation
Frank Farance Farance Inc.
Larry Fitzwater Environmental Protection Agency
Ray Gates Manulife Financial, Canada, (by phone)
Dan Gillman Bureau of the Census
Judy Griffin Statistica (for Department of Energy)
Kathleen Gundry Science Applications International Corporation
William H Kenworthey, Jr. Self
Judith Newton National Institute of Standards and Technology
Douglas Mann Battelle
Phong Ngo Science Applications International Corporation
Anju Rathi EDS (by phone)
Judith Newton chaired the meetings.
Prior to the meeting, Judith sent an agenda with links to the major documents to be discussed. She also sent out messages with information necessary for attending the meeting via conference call. A teleconference bridge was available each of the meeting days for national and international dial-in calls. 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.
1. Agenda for WG 2 Santa Fe meeting
We discussed the agenda and some revisions were suggested. We are concerned that there is only three days of WG meetings and we want to get some real editing work done. The Open Forum on the previous week should bring delegates up to speed with the general information about each of the projects. It is hoped, therefore, that we can focus the WG 2 meetings on fairly substantive editing work. Ray Gates pointed out the need for an agenda for the editing meeting on the Part 3 revision. We will work on creating a draft. Bruce Bargmeyer will contact Tim Bourne to see if he wants to hold an IRDS editing session.
2. Web sites
Some work is underway on revising the SC 32 web site. There is some desire to share the web-site responsibilities and there are several offers of various capabilities. One thing that we need to do is to get the document numbers assigned to certain WG 2 documents. Australia did this for the required documents on the Australian WG 2 web site. Since work is going on around the world, and people need to post documents during their work hours, we need to be able to get document numbers assigned automatically and to have a web-viewable document list. If Australia can do this, we would like to ask them to do it. If not, we understand that Canada may be able to provide such a service. Bruce Bargmeyer will inquire to see if Australia or Canada can offer this service.
To access WG 2 documents, the alias URL http://www.nist.gov/L8/sc32wg2 works, showing the directories on the web site.
The anonymous FTP address is: www.sdct.itl.nist.gov username: anonymous, password: your email address. When connected via FTP, change working directory to L8 and read the readme file.
3. Open Forum
Arrangements are in place for the Open Forum on Metadata Registries, which will be held January 17 -21, 2000 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. The web site for the Open Forum is: http://www.nist.gov/openforum2000 Registration is now open. The immediate action is for people to distribute the call for participation (and URL) to groups who may be interested in attending. Publicity for the Open Forum should be sent out quickly, so that potential participants have time to make plans. Several people agreed to send the call to various lists.
Standards committee members are urged to sign up early, since the block of reserved rooms may not be enough for all participants.
4. ISO/IEC Part 3 Revision
Most of the meeting was spent on the revision of ISO/IEC 11179 Part 3. We went through the issues list and made proposed resolutions to several of the issues. Ray Gates and Doug Mann will edit the standing issues documents to reflect the issue resolutions proposed at this meeting.
A checkpoint version (as of October 1, 1999) of the standing issues documents, model, and revised Part 3 text are on the FTP server. We still need to get the checkpoint material for XML and for the conformance attributes.
To find the checkpoint material, FTP or point your browser to:
www.sdct.itl.nist.gov/~ftp/L8/sc32wg2/projects/11179p3r/checkpoint/19991001/
The documents are in that directory
To help people understand and read the UML diagrams, there is UML documentation at a couple places:
Ray Gates provided the OMG URL:
http://www.omg.org/cgi-bin/doc?ad/97-08-04
and
Doug Mann provided a URL from Rational Corporation:
www.rational.com/uml
In addition to the checkpoint version, all of the project documents for the revision of Part 3 are available on the Internet. The individual issues/proposals are all combined into two standing documents. The first standing document lists brief descriptions of each issue in tabular form. The second standing document contains a compilation of the full information about each issue, including proposed resolution and status.
The WG 2 standing documents for this project can be found in a directory at the following location:
http://www.nist.gov/L8/sc32wg2/projects/11179p3r/standing-documents/
A document that contains a tabular listing of the identified issues for the Part 3 revision (in MS Word Format) is named:
wg2sd11a-issue-list-p3r-table.wd6.doc
A document that contains a tabular listing of the identified issues for the Part 3 revision (in HTML format) is named:
wg2sd11b-issue-list-p3r-table.htm
(The full URL for the above document is (note: you may have to put the URL together if your email system breaks it into separate lines):
http://www.nist.gov/L8/sc32wg2/projects/11179p3r/standing-documents/wg2sd11b-issue-list-p3r-table.htm
A document that contains a the full proposals for the identified issues for the Part 3 revision (in MS Word format) is named:wg2sd12a-issues-list-p3r-documents.wd6.doc
A document that contains a the full proposals for the identified issues for the Part 3 revision (in HTML format) is named:wg2sd12b-issues-list-p3r-documents.htm
Here is the full URL to get the HTML version:http://www.nist.gov/L8/sc32wg2/projects/11179p3r/standing-documents/wg2sd12b-issues-list-p3r-documents.htm
Ray Gates will update the standing document issue files. Participants are asked to review this material and suggest changes or revisions. Another checkpoint version will be created on December 1, 1999. This will be the version that is discussed in the January 2000 WG 2 meeting. 5. Changes to be made to other parts of 11179, due to the revision of Part 3 To respond to one of the Canadian proposals for the revision of Part 3, the editors of each of Parts 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6, should prepare a document describing the changes that need to be maid to their part. We would like to have these documents ready for the December 1, 1999 checkpoint version. The editors are requested to prepare a document for their part..
6. Content Consistency Technical Report
We discussed the "Levels of Abstraction" part of this document. Judith Newton has incorporated material with an object-oriented perspective. Upon discussion, it was agreed that Judith Newton, Tommie Curtis and Lois Fritts would work together on more fully incorporating the generalization - specialization concepts from Object-Oriented documents. This work will apply the concepts to the refinement of general data elements as they are specialized for use in regulations, reporting requirements, forms, and information systems. The other material in the "Levels of Abstraction" section is more relevant to Part 3. Judith will remove it from the Content TR and we will consider how to incorporate it at appropriate places in the Part 3 text.
Lois Fritts will also extend the section on registering groups, with some guidance from Doug Mann on which structures in the current metamodel are to be used for this purpose.
7. Metadata Query Service
The New Work Item proposal is out for JTC 1 ballot. Further work on this project requires that the metamodel be stabilized.
8. IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC)
Frank Farance described the work of the IEEE LTSC. The work of this committee includes standards to enable the sharing of educational materials and learner information. A part of this work involves data semantics and formats. ISO/IEC 11179 is being used to support the maintenance of typing schemes. They have also made substantial use of ISO/IEC 11404, Language Independent Datatypes. There is a desire for collaboration between this effort and the work of SC 32/WG 2. LTSC is developing APIs and XML bindings for its semi-structured data. LTSC is requesting support/advice on its specification of data models.
A proposal will be made to create a new JTC 1 subcommittee to cover Learning Technology.
8. Future meetings:
November:
11/08/1999 1:00 PM
- 04:30 PM NIST North Room 145 -- 11179 Implementers'
Coalition
11/09/1999 9:00 AM
- 05:00 PM NIST North Room 145 -- L8 SIG/11179 Projects meeting
11/09/1999 9:00 AM
- 05:00 PM NIST North Room
501 -- L8 SIG/11179 Projects meeting
11/10/1999 9:00 AM
- 05:00 PM NIST North Room 145 -- L8 SIG/11179
Projects meeting
11/10/1999 9:00 AM
- 05:00 PM NIST North Room 501 -- L8 SIG/11179
Projects meeting
December:
12/07/1999 1:00 PM
- 04:30 PM NIST North Room 145
-- 11179 Implementers' Coalition
12/08/1999 9:00 AM
- 05:00 PM NIST North Room 145
-- L8 SIG/11179 Projects meeting
12/08/1999 9:00 AM
- 05:00 PM NIST North Room 152 -- L8 SIG/11179
Projects meeting
12/09/1999 9:00 AM
- 05:00 PM NIST North CR-501 -- L8 SIG/11179 Projects
meeting
12/10/1999 NIST Administration Building Dining Room
A -- Lunch
12/09/1999 9:00 AM
- 05:00 PM NIST North LR-152 -- L8 SIG/11179 Projects
meeting
12/10/1999 9:00 AM -
05:00 PM NIST North CR-145 --
L8 SIG/11179 Projects meeting
12/10/1999 9:00 AM
- 05:00 PM NIST North LR-152 -- L8 SIG/11179 Projects
meeting
12/10/99
Evening L8 Holiday Party
January
2000:
1/17 -
21/ 2000 Open Forum on Metadata Registries, Santa Fe New Mexico, USA
1/24 -
28/2000 SC32 and WG 2 meetings, Santa
Fe New Mexico, USA
February
2000:
February
23 & 24, 2000 - SIG/Project meeting
March
2000:
March
15 & 16, 2000 - SIG/Project meeting
April
2000:
April
12 & 13, 2000 - SIG/Project meeting
April
14, 2000 - L8 Plenary
May 2000:
May 16
- 18, 2000 - WG 2 in Brussels (tentative)
June
2000:
June 14
& 15, 2000 - SIG/Project meeting
July
2000:
July 19
& 20, 2000 - SIG/Project meeting
August
2000:
Vacation!
September
2000:
September
13 & 14, 2000 - SIG/Project meeting
September
15, 2000 - L8 Plenary
October,
2000
October
9 - 13, 2000 - SC 32 & SC 32 WG 2 in Helsinki (tentative)
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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 stoplight--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 www.sdct.itl.nist.gov. Login as "anonymous" use your email address as a password. Change directory to L8 (in upper or lowercase letters) and check the "readme" file for details. The site is also available on the web at: http://www.sdct.nist.gov/L8 Many of the documents are also listed on the L8 Home Page. The URL for the L8 home page is http://www.lbl.gov/~olken/X3L8".
If you have questions or comments on this document send
email to bargmeyer.bruce@epamail.epa.gov