As you know, we have been planning a joint meeting with NCITS L8. This was
at their invitation, which we accepted, and agreed to schedule in
conjunction with our next meeting in August. Unfortunately, events seem to
have overtaken T2 in terms of needing an August meeting, and most members
seem inclined to want to postpone that meeting until early autumn (e.g.,
October). Regretably, that decision means we are also forced to miss this
opportunity for meeting jointly with L8. In light of this, I have a few
comments about the events and their impact, and suggestions for proceeding
with T2's objectives, including coordination with L8:
CANCELLATION OF ISO CSMF CD EDITING MEETING IN LONDON
Due to a number of factors, including late or non-existent ballot comments
from several national bodies (not including the US, our comments were
received on time), the ISO CSMF RG meeting to edit the CD version of IS
14481 Information Technology - Conceptual Schema Modelling Facilities has
been cancelled. The alternative plan is to process all the edits to the
current CD (including all the previously missing ones) via the CSMF
mail-list, telecons, etc. Those will be approved en masse at the opening of
the next meeting. Any areas of disagreement and open issues regarding the
standard will be documented in advance and national bodies will produce
position papers, which will be voted up or down at the next meeting. The
objective is to either produce a Final CD ballot version at the next
meeting, or simply agree to disagree, cancelling the project and allowing
national bodies to pursue their own standardization approaches for
conceptual modeling. The next meeting is scheduled for January 1998 and is
tentatively planned to be held in Brazil.
At T2's fall meeting, we will need to develop final edits and positions on
the CSMF document, doing the ISO CSMF groundwork via e-mail in the interim.
REQUEST OF AD HOC GROUP (AHG) ON ONTOLOGY FOR POSTPONEMENT
There is a lot of activity currently in the area of ontology, and the
ontology AHG felt it was better to wait to assess these developments before
taking a formal position on whether and how best to proceed with
standardization in the area of ontology, particularly common ontologies for
NL processing, etc.
ISO JOINT WORKSHOP ON META DATA
I was unfortunately unable to attend this important workshop at which
representatives from various fields relating to conceptual modeling, data
management, ontology, etc. gathered and shared their perspectives. The
joint T2/L8 meeting would have provided Bruce Bargmeyer of the EPA, Frank
Olken of LBNL and others an opportunity to summarize the results of this
workshop and assess how they think it impacts on the efforts of T2 and L8.
I would ask that they do that anyway via electronic means and distribute it
(plus a URL to the actual resolutions) to members of T2 and L8 for comment.
JTC1 RE-ENGINEERING
The JTC1 re-engineering group has proposed to combine the current SC14 Data
Element Standardization, SC30 Open edi (data management support for EDI)
and SC21 WG3 Database into a new SC on Data Management Services (no number
assigned yet). This proposal is to be commented on in August and voted on
by JTC1 in September. I consider this a positive development, resulting in
the creation of a single SC for all data management-related activities
[well, throwing in SC7 WG11 Data Modeling would have been helpful, too].
Given that both T2 and L8 will be US TAGs to the new SC, it makes sense for
us to plan a strategy to work closer together. This was to be a major topic
of the August meeting (although the actual JTC1 is hot off of the presses,
it has been discussed for almost a year). I would like T2 members to send
me their opinions on this. Additionally, ideas for working with L8 are
welcomed. One possibility is to organizationally combine T2 and L8. The
combined group might meet once a year as an entire group, and then meet in
the interim in smaller groups based on existing and new projects (e.g.,
CSMF, ontology, meta-model, data administration, etc.).
*****
At this time I'd like to solicit a host and meeting place for the T2
[October] meeting, and ask volunteers to include two or three alternative
sets of 2-3 meeting dates in their offer.
Please feel free to direct comments on any of the above to me.
Cheers,
Tony Sarris
asarris@ontek.com