UWA Road map
This page is used to track plans for each of our work items, including who is leading the work, and commitments in regard to preparing materials for group discussion. We also expect to use the UWA Wiki to facilitate shared editing of materials. Ideally, we should be able to reduce the reliance on the working group teleconference, given the wide range of timezones for working group participants.
See also the Issue/Action Tracker (Members only)
I will investigate the potential for using a working group blog with comments for discussion relating to particular topics. Norm Walsh's post about annotations for reviewers has some interesting links. Roy Fieldings's talk on REST shows the potential for synchronizing video of the presenter to the slides when playing back a recording. SVG looks very promising for doing that in future judging from demos at SVG Open 2007.
Delivery Context Ontology
Lead: Jose Manuel Cantera Fonseca
- Working Draft, 15 April 2008
This is an OWL ontology of key properties for content adaptation and is being developed in cooperation with the Device Description working group and the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA). The aim is to provide a common basis for a number of programming interfaces for accessing the delivery context that are currently under development within UWA WG (DCCI), MWI DD (Repository API) and OMA (DPE).
We plan to add further properties in future drafts, e.g. device location, calendar and contact information, based upon existing work. We are also expecting to cover a much wider range of devices, such as printers and cameras.
Rhys Lewis kindly provided a guide to how the ontology was constructed.
Delivery Context Client Interfaces (DCCI)
Lead: Keith Waters
- Candidate Recommendation, 21 December 2007
This define interfaces for exposing the delivery context to Web page scripts. It provides a framework for a hierarchy of properties and is designed to enable applications to dynamically adapt to changes in user preferences, device capabilities and environmental conditions.
The next step will be to define specific properties based upon the Delivery Context Ontology, for example, screen size/orientation, battery level, and signal strength.
Further reading on implementation work for the DCCI:
- Delivery Context Access for the Mobile Web, Sailesh Sathish, May 2007
- Location-based Mashups for Nokia Internet Tablets, Andreas Brodt, August 2007
Content Selection for Device Independence (DISelect)
Lead: Rhys Lewis
- Candidate Recommendation, 25 July 2007
Defines markup for selecting between versions of content according to the delivery context. This specification is normatively referenced from DIAL.
This is currently in Candidate Recommendation status and awaiting an implementation report. The status of this will need to be reviewed at the November 2007 face to face.
Delivery Context: XPath Access Functions
Lead: Rhys Lewis
- Candidate Recommendation, 25 July 2007
Defines functions for use in XPath expressions as part of markup for selecting content according to the delivery context(DISelect).
This is currently in Candidate Recommendation status and awaiting an implementation report. The status of this will need to be reviewed at the November 2007 face to face. This work item is normatively referenced from DIAL.
Composite Capability/Preference Profiles: Structure and Vocabularies 2.0
Lead: Stephane Boyera
- Last Call WD, 25 July 2007
This updates the CC/PP 1.0 Recommendation bringing it in line with the latest revision of RDF, and ensures its interoperability with OMA's UAProf2.
Following the Last Call, we are preparing this for transition to Candidate Recommendation. This is a low priority, but anticipated to occur between December 2007 and February 2008.
Device Independent Authoring Language (DIAL)
Lead: Kevin Smith
- Working Draft, 27 July 2007
A combination of XHTML2, XForms and DISelect that is designed for adaptation to a wide range of delivery contexts. Further work is expected to lead to a second version (DIAL v2) that also includes support for XBL, SVG and SMIL.
We are planning on readying DIAL v1 for a Last Call late in 2007.
Rich metadata for device capabilities and services
Lead: Kazuhiro Kitagawa
- No documents as yet
This work item will provide descriptions of common devices such as printers, cameras and media players. The descriptions cover the device capabilities and a model of how to control the device via an exchange of events. The aim will be enable such devices to be directly integrated into web applications.
This work will leverage the efforts of PUCC. Kaz says he will have something to present by the November face to face if not sooner.
Remote User Interfaces and Distributed DOMs
Lead: Dave Raggett, Vlad Stirbu
This looks beyond Web browsers to new kinds of applications based upon distributed document object models, where an application running on one device is coupled to a user interface running on another via an exchange of events.
A related issue is how to enable events to be passed from one device to another across different addressing schemes, with gateways coupling different networking technologies, and across security boundaries such as NAT, Firewalls and gateways. Incoming HTTP connections are typically blocked, but work arounds exist using long lasting outgoing connections for routing messages via proxies on the public Internet.
Work on VoIP and videotelephony has led to the development of techniques to tunnel RTP-based media streams across NATs, for example, ICE, STUN and TURN, with derivatives like STUNT for setting up peer to peer TCP connections suitable for reliable delivery of events.
It would be valuable to define how to serialize events as XML with bindings to protocols like SIP, XMPP and HTTP, and together with the means for initiating communication paths for event streams, and options for managed flows. HTTP is commonly used for accessing Web pages and for SOAP or REST based Web Services. SIP is mostly used for VoIP and forms a key part of IMS for mobile networks. XMPP is an increasingly popular alternative to SIP for instant messaging and managing media streams via the Jingle extensions.
The stack of Web Services standards are clearly relevant, although they shouldn't be required for all transports. Should we also consider self organizing mesh networks and what kinds of addressing schemes would this entail? Should we also consider JSON as an alternative representation for serializing events?
Vlad is preparing some discussion materials covering use cases, requirements and leveraging previous work on Widex and REX. When is this due?
Device Coordination and Resource Binding
Lead: Dave Raggett
- No documents as yet
Ubiquitous Web Applications can access a mix of local and remote services on multiple devices. This involves the means to identify devices and describe the services that they provide, together with a means to search for services and bind to them. A few examples of services include printing, playing an audio-visual media stream (speaker and display), capturing an image or video with a camera, setting the desired temperature for an air conditioning system, operating locks on doorways, and sensors for detecting fires or intruders.
Access to services may be managed or unmanaged. Devices may range widely in their capabilities from RFID tags to powerful server arrays. Devices may act as clients, servers or a combination of both. Web technologies offer the promise of simplifying authoring of distributed applications, and the means to represent and reason over rich descriptions of device capabilities, their current states, and associated access control policies.
The UWA Charter calls out for work on an interface by which Web applications can bind to local and remote resources via DOM objects that act as proxies for those resources. Applications would then be able to access such resources by exchanging events with the proxy objects. Some further details can be found in a message posted in June 2007. The binding interface should permit a range of access control mechanisms which are likely to be standardized separately, and to exploit rich metadata and trust management services. A workshop on access control and associated trust models is being planned for the first half of 2008.
Resource binding is just one aspect of device coordination. The next step will be to write up use cases and requirements, and to show the relationship to existing mechanisms. Kangchan Lee presented ideas on managed services on 11 October 2007, where access to resources is managed by a server to minimize conflicts. This exploits rich metadata for services, including state models as a basis for detecting potential conflicts.
Device Location
Lead: Ryan Sarver
- No documents as yet
This work will propose a simple means to expose location to web applications in manner that is independent of the techniques used to determine device location. This will provide an important use case for the associated work item on resource binding and access control mechanisms.
Ryan expects to have something to present in the second half of September.
Declarative Models of Distributed Web Applications (UIArch)
Lead: Dave Raggett, Rotan Hanrahan, Jose Manuel Cantera Fonseca
- No documents as yet
This work item is looking at possible next steps following the Dublin workshop held in June 2007. How can research on layered architectures for user interfaces be applied to Ubiquitous Web Applications, and what is the relationship to DIAL and proposed work items on policy based layout?
How to move this forward prior to the November face to face?
Miscellaneous
The Charter also calls for work on interfaces for a variety of device based capabilities, such as local storage, audio settings, imaging sensors, and device based applications such as the address book and calendar. These would be exposed via the DCCI using the resource binding mechanisms described above.
Who wants to take a lead on this with a view to leading a discussion on next steps at the November face to face?