Title: Canadian Position on Registration Authority Process NWI Proposal

Supersedes: -

Source: Canada

Status: National Body Position

Action: For information to WG2

Date: 19 October 2003

This paper refines Canada's position on the Registration Authority Process NWI in light of the ballot.

1. Canada voted "NO" with comments on SC32 N974. We anticipated that the ballot would pass despite our negative vote, and our comments were intended to influence the approach to the project based on this assumption. However, since the ballot failed, we do not intend to change our vote, and our detailed comments have become moot. We are not interested in pursuing the NWI at the Melbourne meeting.

2. Canada supports the creation of a reference implementation of the 11179 metamodel registry, and using the metamodel itself as example content in the registry. Such a reference implementation will require a registration authority and associated procedures, but the registration authority does not need to be recognized by ISO and thus the associated procedures do not need to be published a standard. Canada is interested in discussing the creation of the registry, its contents and associated procedures at the Melbourne meeting.

3. It is one thing to use a registry as a normative repository of code lists. It is quite another to rely on a registry as the normative specification of the metamodel for the same registry. Extending the model may well require extending the registry schema to support the extensions, making such evolution non-trivial. Once the reference implementation exists, it will be easier to envision how it might be used to support the evolution of the standard itself. Until then, we prefer to rely on the documents for normative specification. Any problems encountered during the implementation of the registry can be addressed via technical corrigenda and/or amendments.