Web Services Architecture Working Group
21-Feb-2002 meeting minutes

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Attendance

Present
------------------------------------------
Apple                   Mike Brumbelow
BEA                     Dave Orchard
Boeing                  Gerald Edgar
CA                      Igor Sedukhin
ChevronTexaco           Roger Cutler
Compaq                  Kevin Perkins
Compaq                  Yin-Leng Husband
Contivo                 Dave Hollander
CrossWeave              Timothy Jones
DaimlerChrysler         Hans-Peter Steiert
Daimler Chrysler        Mario Jekle
Digital Island/Exodus   Joseph Hui
EDS                     Waqar Sadiq
Ericsson                Nilo Mitra
HP                      Zulah Eckert
IBM                     Heather Kreger
Intel                   Sharad Garg
IONA                    Steve Vinoski 
Ipedo                   Srinivas Pandrangi
Macromedia              Glen Daniels
Microsoft               Allen Brown
Microsoft               Henrik Nielsen
MITRE                   James Davenport
MITRE                   Paul Denning
Nortel                  Abbie Barbir
Oracle                  Jeff Mischkinsky
SAP                     Sinisa Zimek
Software AG             Mike Champion
Sun                     Chris Ferris
Sun                     Doug Bunting
Sybase                  Himagiri  
Systinet                Anne Thomas Manes
W.W. Grainger           Tom Carroll   
W.W. Grainger           Daniel Austin
W3C                     Hugo Haas
WebMethods              Prasad Yendluri

Regrets
------------------------------------------
DISA                   Marcel Jemio
HP                     Dorothea Beringer
Nokia                  Michael Mahan   
Planetfred             Mark Baker  

Not Present
------------------------------------------
Cisco                   Sandeep Kumar
Cisco                   Krishna Sankar
Documentum              Don Robertson
EDS                     Mike Ballantyne
IBM                     Jim Knutson 
Intel                   Joel Munter
IONA                    Eric Newcomer
Ipedo                   Alex Cheng
Macromedia              Tom Jordahl
Software AG             Nigel Hutchison
Sun                     Mark Hapner
Waveset                 Darran Rolls
    

Agenda

See agenda posted by the Chair.

Detailed minutes

2. Agenda review, and AOB

  Jeff, Oracle - discussion on WS/Description WG about use of object
  references in that group.  Get that on our agenda?
  Chris, add just before item 8 above ("mission statement")
    

Approval of February 14 Feb telcon minutes

   No objection to approving minutes from last week - Approved
    

Review of outstanding action items

None.

5. Status

        WS-CG met this week, mostly talked about Technical Plenary and
  proposed Web Services session (1 hour), may discuss re-chartering
  - Q&A may include some discussion of each area eg. "What is a Web
  Service?"
  - Jeff Maginsky will represent our group at this Plenary, Chris will not
  attend.
  - WS-CG did not discuss liaison work with outside groups, did talk about
  relationship to Semantic Web work.

       Editing team (Daniel Austin): Now have a team in place
  Editing team, Chris and Hugo met twice this week.  Result is the
  Requirements document.  Hopes the issues with access to this document
  have been resolved.  Issues:
    - Some errors and typos
    - Some problems in naming conventions
    - Basically, very date-driven towards providing a stake in the ground
    - Started from Daniel's numbered goals, Mike Champion's definition of a
  web service, a few other things (eg. goals from the list), general
  outline of the final document with lost of empty space.
    - Plan to update the document weekly as we move towards F2F.
  Hugo: Use CVS variable to generate a date for the document.  Not a W3C
  working draft, an internal document.  Remove "Working Draft" nomenclature
  for now.
  Chris: Some experience with XML-P working group drove his comments.
  Daniel: Let's take this off the call and handle out of band.
    

Review of initial Requirements draft

   Thoughts on this Requirements draft?  A few people hadn't read this
  document.
  Chris: Working to keep this group's efforts publicly available (operating
  in full view as much as possible).  Avoid complains (as occurred with
  XML-P) that might arise from hidden processing.
  Chris: Anyone have problems with making this public with many caveats?
  Doug: Though I haven't read it, see no problems given the many caveats.
  Daniel: Delineated the many caveats in the document.
  Paul Denning: Assume we remove the "Working Draft" words as described
  above.
  Dave Hollander: What is our intent in doing these publications?
  Chris: Would like to keep it as up-to-date as possible.
  Dave Hollander: Is work group approval necessary for each later
  publication?
  Chris: Let editors publish when they wish, don't review every version.
  Prior to F2F, everyone in group should do thorough review (of a frozen
  version) to allow people to bring their comments to the F2F.  Give W3C
  members ability to participate in Requirements discussion.
  Dave Hollander: Ensuring this won't a substantive decision going forward,
  avoiding issues with delays and group members' review time.
  Jeff Mischkinsky: Will it be a working draft after F2F?
  Chris: Yes, following the F2F should have resolved the issues, one last
  round of editing to match those resolutions, then will vote to make it an
  official Working Draft.
  Jeff Mischkinsky: Should this roadmap be in the preamble.
  Chris: Hugo, is that appropriate?
  Hugo: We can put whatever we like in the document, fine to work towards
  this roadmap.
  Daniel: Required by W3C Process to have everything for F2F available 1
  week prior to that date.  1 April will be final publication before F2F.
  Jeff: May want to ensure we get all comments in prior to 1 April.
  Hugo: No requirement to solicit public comments prior to first "real"
  publication.  May be better to wait until it's a real draft.
  On the other hand, no reason to hide from the public.  In our charter to
  operate as publicly as possible.  Welcome comments though we don't
  solicit them.

  Dave Hollander: Great sentiment: Put into the document enough information
  that reader can understand the current status and set future expectations.
  ACTION: Daniel Austin to add suitable text describing this overall
  intent (not specific schedule) to the document.

  Chris: Any other comments on this?
  Nilo Mitra: Comments on document or its publication?
  His comment (sent via email) was only on the document and shouldn't
  prevent publication.

  Chris: Anything else before we make it pseudo-public, linking it from our
  public web page?
  Chris: Hearing none, will go ahead.
  Daniel: Will change permissions.
  ACTION Daniel to change permissions on the draft
  (he'll mix that with above item and some cleanup).
  ACTION: Hugo: Will add link from our public home page

6a) Jeff: Point about Web Services Description WG issue dealing with
    object references.  Some in that group thought our group should be
    deciding their scope.
    Waqar: Thought issue centered around service reference.  A fundamental
    issue rather than a pure description issue (life cycle).  Thought
    underlying model had to exist before it could be described.  Will be
    handled from a Description point of view later.  How do we see them
    working?
    Daniel: Is it odd to have Architecture running in parallel?
    Dave Orchard: No reason to hold up work in the other groups.  Very
    comfortable with other groups working in parallel.
    Waqar: Also came up during XML-P requirements gathering.  Certainly an
    issue that doesn't just get handled in one WG.  A fundamental issue our
    group should address.
    Chris: Doesn't want to solve the problem on this call.
    Waqar: Get feedback from this group.  Start the thoughts around this
    issue.  Solicit feedback.
    Chris: Question really raised is "how to handle tracking of issues
    raised in other W/S WG's?"  Can't solve this on the call, how to fill
    this hole in our process?  Should we start an issues list immediately?
    Is this an issue?
    Dave Orchard: Definitely should be tracking issues from other groups.
    W/S Architecture document should resolve these issues as possible.
    Should also prioritize these incoming issues against requirements and
    use cases.  Need use cases and requirements to handle this issue; a way
    to flesh out those use cases and requirements.  Our process at the end
    of the day: Doing a bottom up architecture document as we attempt to
    answer these questions.
    Jeff: Agrees with David.  Adding concern about other groups waiting for
    us to address this problem.  WSDL has an underlying architectural model
    of the world, shouldn't be asking us to define the same thing.  Let
    them attack these problems.  We can react to anything concrete they
    come up with; they can react to something concrete we produce.
    Chris: How to express the issue?  For example, should object references
    be a requirement for Description WG?  May be better for those groups to
    provide use cases to us.
    Dave Hollander: Dave Orchard correct.  Should only extend this to tell
    outside groups very quickly whether or not we'll address the issue.
    Don't leave it in the queue, would be destructive to the process.
    Daniel Austin: Let's decide how to deal with the issues list?
    Discussion seems to lead us to a rather large overlap with the
    Requirements document.
    Chris: Concerned we'll end up answering questions instead of defining
    and architecture.
    Dave Orchard: What would be the downside to answering questions?
    Chris: Main issue is not getting an architecture out.  That
    architecture should answer the questions.
    Daniel or Dave: Some group to prepare things on behalf of the
    submitters.  Maybe, set up another sub team.
    Dave Hollander: Schema WG assigned 1-3 members of WG to each response.
    Feed back response along with (possibility) of outstanding rejections.
    Chris: Not necessarily a fixed team?
    Dave Hollander: At one point, just went around the room.
    Chris: Will the editors take this up?
    Daniel: Would like an additional resource to maintain the issues list.
    Dave Hollander: Will join the editors team to handle the issues list?
    ACTION: Dave Hollander to start an issues list.
    Chris: Process that includes feedback to submitter, requesting use
    case.
    Waqar: Likely to have use cases fleshed out within the submitting
    group.
    Dave Orchard: Notion of use cases is crucial.  Request submitting team
    to refer their issue to our existing use cases or to suggest expansion
    to our set of use cases.
    Dave Orchard: Since we don't have any use cases yet, get the ones WSDL
    group has.
    Jeff: Make sure WSDL group doesn't wait for us.  Make it clear we don't
    expect that of them.  Make sure they don't think this is a WSA issue
    and have that block them.
    Chris: Let them know almost immediately and provide them our priority.
    Waqar: Agree in general.  However, some problems are architectural and
    any WG solution (which might be superficial) will impact other teams.
    Avoid hacked up solution.
    Dave Orchard: Deal with architectural issue in same way company
    architects do it: Tell them to go ahead with hacked solution, may come
    back later with a better solution.
    ACTION: Dave Hollander Will draft a process for handling issues of
    this ilk.

Chris: 25 minutes left, went way over on this last item.
    

7. "What is a web service?" discussion (Limited to 15 minutes)

  Chris: Start the discussion, so that we have a strawman for the Plenary.
  Has seen some comments from Mike, Dave Orchard and Heather.
  Dave Orchard: Should define web services as a subclass or subtype of the
  web "if you will".  Something that fits inside the web.  Some may think
  of web services as something more than the web.  Take a general
  definition of the web, loosening data type and protocol issues, then
  define web services in terms of this definition.  Some refinement that
  mentions SOAP, WSDL, et cetera would be appropriate.
  Roger: Response to question was silence.  Impression web services are
  something that exists at one point in time.  Suppose you have a
  purchasing system that's not a web service.  Is a web service one of
  those components that's part of this system?
  Daniel: Introductory document includes Mike's strawman.  Pretty well
  meets Dave's discussion.  Start with that and refine it.  Add "thingie"
  to the glossary.
  Chris: Also, add "do-hickey".
** Action item for Dave Hollander?
  Waqar: Defining web services for our group in particular.  Definition
  should / must include other activities such as WSDL and SOAP (other
  activities in this group).
  Anne: Orchestration versus services question Roger raised.  Services are
  components that are contained within an overall orchestration.  Don't
  describe the orchestration as a single service unless it is used in that
  fashion.  Choreographed system not a priori a web service.
  Dave Orchard: Likes inclusion of web service as a descrete thingy: A
  single resource.  Fits in well with the web architecture description of
  an identifiable resource.  Avoids some issues with web service as a
  collection -- say it isn't from the start.
  Henrik: Follow up on David's point.  Important that we don't do top-down
  definition.  Good to start without a lid, limiting how far we can go.
  Have the first components being worked upon.  Huge amount of space in
  WSDL and SOAP that can be filled out.
  Steve: Disagreeing somewhat with Anne's definition.  No reason to limit
  web services only to things not composed of other web services.  Special
  thing about web services is its support for application to application
  integration.  Inclusion of orchestration, choreography and semantics will
  be very important.
  Chris: Queue getting too long.  Are people comfortable settling rest of
  issues on the list or deferring 'til next week.

  Dave Orchard: Respond to Steve on orchestration.  Likes web service being
  a single thing.  Hard to give resource identifier to a larger
  orchestration.  Need to be able to couple things into web architecture.
  Waqar: Perfectly legitimate to package an orchestration as a web
  service.  That orchestration provides a single service externally.  Can't
  be rigid about it.
  Igor: What is web service?  Losing important points about business
  metadata that may exist around the web service.  Meaning of the process
  is what's important.
  Gerald: Back to Anne's desire to have web service as a single object.  Go
  to web page that may include objects drawn from multiple places.  Can
  layer architecture to not include orchestration by default.
  Anne: Web service that sends things out to other services very different
  than ebXML concept of collaboration.  "What I'm going to do after you do
  something."  Task uses a number of different resources.
  Sharad: Should look at web services in a broader aspect.  All of our
  discussion has focused on commerce use cases.  Think about general
  provision of shared resources on the web.
  Hugo: Emphasize David Orchard's point.  We really must identify web
  services by URI.  If URI web services disappear, we're in trouble.
  A few people: Yup.

  Chris: Will compile this and present to the group.  Tentative position in
  Jeff's presentation.
    

New item: Added issues to the list of goals.

  Daniel Austin: Pointing to goal 15, a point made by Dave.  Dave Orchard
  like's it.
  Pointing to goal 16, a point made by Anne.
  Waqar: Original submission used the word "functional", should that be
  added again?
  Daniel: Added it back.
  Pointing to issue (1a), a point made by Dave Hollander.  A potential
  replacement for goal (1)?  Please discuss on mailing list.  Wants to nail
  this one in particular.
  Dave Hollander: Please remove my name here.
  ACTION: Daniel Austin: Will remove your name and Mike Champions from the
  document.

 Chris: About out of time.  Useful though we didn't cover last issue.  Will
 have a meeting next week in spite of number of people in Cannes.
 Recommend those in Cannes seek a central location for teleconferencing
 into the group, might need to request something from hotel.
    

Summary of new action items


Chair: Chris Ferris <chris.ferris@sun.com>
Scribe: Doug Bunting <doug.bunting@sun.com>