Meeting Report

National Committee for Information Technology Standards (NCITS)

L8, Data Representation, Special Interest Group

Held at the Hunt's Landing Best Western, Pennsylvania

May 13-15, 1998

Attendees:

NCITS/L8:

Bruce Bargmeyer, Environmental Protection Agency

Eliot Christian, US Geological Survey

Thomas Culpepper, Applied Technology Research

Larry Fitzwater, Environmental Protection Agency

Doug Mann, Pacific Northwest Laboratory

Bob Mayes, Health Care Financing Administration

John McCarthy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (by teleconference)

Judith Newton, National Institute of Standards and Technology

Phong Ngo, Science Applications International Corporation (by teleconference)

Frank Olken, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (by teleconference)

Burt Parker, Paladin Integration Engineering, Inc. (by teleconference)

Andy Schoka, Mitretec Systems

NCITS/T2 (Thursday meeting)

Bill Andersen, IBM

Lee Avspitz, MNIS

Roger Burkhart, Deere and Company

Patrick Cassidy, MICRA Inc.

Murray Freeman, FOSI Limited

Hiam Kilov, Merrill Lynch

Nancy Lawler, DoD

Bancroft Scott, OSS

Mike Poess, Stanford

Tony Sarris, Ontek Corporation

John Sowa, Concept Technology

Robert (Tony) Weida, IBM

SC 32/WG 2:

Joe Christensen, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (by teleconference)

The following is a report of the topics addressed and the agreements made:

The L8 SIG meeting was held on May 13 and 15. A joint meeting was held with T2 on May 14.

Judith Newton chaired the L8 SIG meetings; Tony Sarris chaired the joint L8/T2 meeting.

L8 SIG meeting:

  1. Potential merge of L8 and T2

Prior to the joint meeting, the L8 SIG group discussed the pros and cons of merging the two committees. The merging of the work of the two committees at the international level--ISO/IEC, JTC 1/SC 32/WG 2, Metadata--brings this consideration to the fore. On the pro side, most participants expressed considerable interest in the potentially combined programs of work of the two committees. The programs of work are at least complimentary, if not overlapping--both focus on the content (semantics) of data. On the con side, members wish to continue to make rapid progress on particular work items, without distraction or unrewarding complication. We need to produce practical standards that are useful in the short-term. A combined program of work could produce distractions and add time spent in coordinating with a larger group. At this preliminary stage, most, but not all L8 members supported the potential merge.

2. Metadata Registries Workshop

About 70 people participated in the Metadata Registries Workshop. The presentations are on the L8 FTP site. An html page is being prepared to make it easy to download the presentation files. A message will be sent out to the participants when the page is ready. Larry Fitzwater and Doug Mann will prepare a feedback questionnaire to circulate to participants. Eliot Christian will provide a brief report of the Workshop that he sent to D-Lib Magazine (Digital Libraries) see: < http://www.dlib.org > (Also in this issue of D-Lib Magazine, there is an introduction to the Resource Description Framework (RDF) by Eric Miller.) Robert Lewis will incorporate Eliot's report into the Workshop home page.

Suggestions for follow-on activities include holding implementer workshops for both the technology and for the content. Another possibility is to have SC 32 sanction a future workshop.

[Since the meeting, Robert Lewis added Eliot's brief Workshop report to the home page and added the presentation download page.

See: ftp://sdct-sunsrv1.ncsl.nist.gov/x3l8/other/registry-workshop/meta00.htm ]

4. ANS X3.285, Metamodel for the Management of Sharable Data

Doug Mann reported that all NCITS action on this is complete on this standard. It was sent to the ANSI prepublication editor. It should be published soon.

  1. Future Work for SC 32/WG 2

SC 32/WG 2 is being formed from three groups that were previously parts of other ISO committees. The JTC 1 reengineering report stated that it is desirable to merge the incoming groups into a combined effort. We desire to progress the current projects as quickly as possible, without delay due to the reengineering. As the incoming projects are completed, it will take considerable effort and resources to propose, organize and initiate the new work of WG 2. The proposed "metadata" scope for WG 2 is large and connects to many other ongoing standards efforts inside and outside of ISO/IEC. For example, we need close connection to efforts in the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Object Management Group (OMG). We need participants with the resources to research and develop the concepts and to test them in reference implementations. We need to organize workshops, seminars and other means of communication with IT developers and users. The metadata field is moving very rapidly, so we must develop a rapid means to communicate and collaborate between relatively infrequent face-to-face meetings. The L8 members indicated that we are only interested in participating in the standards development effort, if we can make rapid progress on standards that have practical application and/or market potential for our organizations. There is strong support for the US to provide the convener and secretariat services for WG 2. This would help to acquire and organize the financial and human resources necessary to rapidly progress the work of WG 2.

We discussed potential new work that we would like to propose at the upcoming SC 32/WG 2 meeting. The topics could be packaged into New Work Items (NWIs) in a number of ways. The major topics for which there was general support include:

  1. XML tags for metadata registries. We could develop a set of metadata tags based on XML-Data and/or XML/Resource Description Framework (RDF). This could make ISO/IEC 11179 useful to the new XML community. One goal of this effort would be to enable interaction among metadata registries. Another goal would be to enable XML applications (such as XML-EDI) to directly access metadata registries. Frank Olken and John McCarthy will prepare a draft NWI for this work. We propose to discuss the NWI at the July SC 32/WG 2 meeting in Brisbane Australia.
  2. Update ISO/IEC 11179, Specification and Standardization of Data Elements, Part 3, Basic Attributes. (Part 3 is up for 5-year review next year). Related to this would be an effort to develop and corrigenda for the other parts of ISO/IEC 11179 to make the separately developed parts consistent between themselves and to make them consistent with the revised Part 3. This would preserve the name recognition of ISO/IEC 11179, while updating it to deal with new techniques and technologies. The recently completed ANS X3.285 incorporates virtually all of 11179, Part 3, extends the list of attributes, and presents the information in the form of a model. It includes an informative annex with translations to several popular modeling notations. This work could serve as a basis for rapidly updating Part 3. Joe Christensen is willing to become the editor for this work and will prepare a draft NWI for discussion at the coming SC 32/WG 2 meeting.
  3. Develop extensions to ISO/IEC 11179 (as revised, in topic 4.B., above). Several extensions are proposed. These extensions include coverage of data composites and other complex data, extension to registration of objects (e.g., include attributes for behavior/methods), extensions to better handle terminology/classification metadata, and the addition of attributes needed to document data element groups and to document application level data. This work may require multiple editors. Thomas Culpepper and Harold Solbrig will prepare a NWI for the "object" aspects of this work. This is proposed for discussion at the SC 32/WG 2 meeting.
  4. Global Information Locator Service -- machine to machine interface definition. This standard or technical report would examine the information technology characteristics of a next generation search interface that would further enable the deployment of a global information locator service. Within specific domains, standard mechanisms to locate information resources are being deployed, but the few cross-domain standards are protocol specific (e.g., SQL, ISO 23950). A semantically based object interface for search would enable a global information locator service. Such a standard interface is an incremental step from current technology. The interface could be quickly applied on peer computer networks and other architectures, to the immediate benefit of the public, government, industry, and all other sectors that need information discovery and retrieval facilities. This work addresses machine to machine interfaces and would work with any relevant human-machine interface. Eliot Christian will prepare a draft NWI for discussion at the SC 32/WG 2 meeting.
  1. ISO/IEC 11179 Parts 1 and 2 and

    2. ISO/IEC 11179, Part 1, Framework, is out for 2nd CD ballot. (This should have been sent out for Final CD ballot, but in the change from SC 14 to SC 32, this progression was missed.) Comments were received unofficially from Jake Knoppers in Canada. Dan Gillman and Doug Mann met to work on resolutions to the comments. Most issues were resolved. Some should best be held for the revision of ISO/IEC 11179 as described in the New Work Item 5.B., above. We should discuss this document at the SC 32/WG 2 meeting.

    ISO/IEC 11179, Part 2, Classification of Data Elements, is out for Final CD ballot. The results of the ballot should be available in time to discuss at the SC 32/WG 2 meeting.

    ISO/IEC CD 15452, Information Technology - Specification of data value domains. Judith Newton reported that this work passed its CD ballot. Judith has prepared a new draft responding to comments received. She is posting this version to the L8 FTP site. It will be reviewed at the SC 32/WG 2 meeting. It was also suggested that the Data Value Domain work be made an extension of ISO/IEC 11179, rather than become a separate ISO standard. This would make sense, if it is agreed to update ISO/IEC 11179 in some manner, e.g., as suggested above.

  2. SC 32 issues

    3. We discussed the upcoming SC 32 meeting. The US strongly desires to provide the convenership for WG 2. The intention is to build a WG that is greater than the sum of the incoming parts. This will involve launching New Work Items and attracting new members. It is desired that we organize the WG to expeditiously complete the currently assigned program of work, possibly through use of Rapporteurs.

    We identified the potential delegation to the SC 32/WG 2 meeting and during the meeting Phong Ngo sent out a notice to see if anyone else is interested in joining the U.S. delegation.

    For a WG 2 meeting agenda and other information about WG 2, see the website set up by Joe Christensen at: http://metadata.aihw.gov.au

  3. Joint meeting with T2

    4. L8 and T2 met together for a full day. L8 and T2 members gave several presentations describing the past, current and proposed work of the two committees (and projects related to committee work). Bancroft Scott described the general concepts and uses of ASN.1. Bill Andersen briefed us on the Knowledge Bus Ontology Project. Frank Olken discussed XML, XML-DATA and the W3C Resource Description Framework (RDF) efforts. He also made comparisons between XML/RDF and ASN.1. John Sowa discussed ongoing work relating to Conceptual Schemas and the Knowledge Interchange Format (KIF). Tony Sarris described progress with the Conceptual Schema Modeling Facility CD. John Sowa and Tony Saris described the status and plans of the Ad Hoc Group -- Ontology. Judith Newton described the work proceeding on CD 15452, Specification of Data Value Domains. L8 members also described other L8 efforts and the NWIs listed above in Item 4.

    We discussed potential areas of common interest between L8 and T2. Both groups are involved in management of data semantics. There are many ways that the work of one committee could be directly useful to the other. For example the Conceptual Schema Modeling Facility and Ontology efforts in T2 could be directly applied in the L8 metadata registry work. And similarly, the metadata registry could be an important component of ontology-based middleware being researched and tested by T2 members. We also discussed the utilization of our work for various application areas such as EDI.

    The general thrust of most comments indicated a desire to merge the two groups. A proposal will be put together by Tony Sarris, Murray Freeman, Doug Mann and Bruce Bargmeyer. After it is reviewed, the document will be balloted by both L8 and T2. Phong Ngo will check with NCITS to see if there are any requirements imposed by NCITS and/or ANSI.

    Hiam Kilov raised the potential for CORBA/OMG connections and discussed the desirability of communicating the work of L8 to OMG groups. He will arrange for presentations to be made. Roger Burkhart may be able to make the presentations. In both the L8 and L8/T2 meetings, Tom Culpepper discussed the potential for collaboration with OMG. He and Harold Solbrig will help us to identify areas where we may collaborate and coordinate with ongoing OMG work. One area that may relate to L8 work is the Lexicon Query Service CORBA-MED URL: www.omg.org/corbamed/lex.htm

  4. Future meeting schedule

    5. June 10-12, 1998 at NIST North Room 501 - L8 SIG and Plenary

    July 6-11, 1998 SC 32 and SC 32/WG 2 at Brisbane, Australia

  5. Appreciation to Host

The members of L8 and T2 expressed their appreciation to Murray Freeman and FOSI Ltd. for the excellent arrangements for the meetings, luncheon, tour, and assistance provided during the meeting. We enjoyed the National Park Service presentation about the Charles Peirce home and especially enjoyed our tour to the home and to the nearby museum where we heard presentations about Charles Peirce. Many of the L8 and T2 members have heard much about the work of Peirce. His work in pragmatics and semiotics provides an important foundation for our semantics management efforts. It was a pleasure to hear more about his life and work.

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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 stop light--this is the intersection of West Diamond Avenue and Bureau drive.)

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X3L8 documents, including this meeting report, are available via Anonymous FTP from sdct-sunsrv1.ncsl.nist.gov. Change directory to X3L8 (X3L8 in lowercase letters) and check the "readme" file for details. Many of the documents are also listed on the X3L8 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.