Status Report

 

April 17, 2002

Cooperation between XML Registries and Related Registries

A Collaborative Effort between the XML Working Group and

Federal and State Government Agencies

XML Working Group Task 2.2.3.2 Registry Standards Harmonization

 

The background and purpose of this effort are described under XML Working Group Task 2.2.3.2. This status report is keyed to the subtasks identified in that document.

 

A. Conference

 

Task: Organize a major conference drawing together standards developers, software developers and practitioners. The major topic will be ISO/IEC 11179 metadata registries and XML registries/repositories. Related topics such as resource discovery (UDDI), terminology, etc. will also be covered. The conference organizers will work with standards developers, software developers and practitioners to encourage progress toward interoperability. The conference is intended to showcase progress made. Therefore, the conference will be scheduled at a future date that enables the participants to report on actual progress. The conference is expected to have separate tracks for various communities of interest. The conference is expected to have multiple sponsors. Tracks in the conference will cover tutorials about the relevant standards and use of the standards in practical work in a number of application areas, such as the environment, healthcare, statistics, transportation, and learning technologies.

 

Status:

This major effort is underway. An Open Forum will be held the week of January 20, 2003 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. An organizing committee has been formed and the concept for the Open Forum is established. A draft website is available for review by the Organizing Committee members. See: http://xw2k.sdct.itl.nist.gov/l8/Participate/Conferences/OpenForum2003 . The website includes a description of the concept for the conference. The organizing committee is working on developing the program. The draft web site has a list of Organizing Committee members. (Note: At some point the URL for the draft web site may be replaced by another, probably when the site is complete. At this time the above URL is for the draft website, which has increasing functionality and information, but is not to be considered as a public release version.)

 

An email reflector is operational for the Open Forum Organizing Committee. An email archive will be associated with the reflector. The Organizing Committee is working primarily by email and teleconferences. All presentations at the Open Forum will be invited; there will be no call for papers.

 

Briefly, here is some descriptive material about the Open Forum:

Participants will explore the capabilities, uses, content, development, and operation of registries and related technologies. Emphasis is on managing the semantics (meaning) of data that is shared within and between organizations or disseminated via the World Wide Web.

This Open Forum will concentrate on the following technologies:

• ISO/IEC 11179 Metadata Registries
• Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI)
• XML Registries/Repositories
• Database Catalogs (e.g., relational DBMS/SQL)
• CASE Tool Repositories
• Software Component Registries
• Ontological Registries

Tutorials will be given on these technologies and on the relevant standards. A theme will be cooperation and interoperation of these technologies.

This Open Forum will highlight ongoing efforts with "tracks" that describe and demonstrate the practical use of the technologies. The tracks are:

Monday & Tuesday:

• Standards & tutorials

Wednesday – Friday

• Defense
• Environment
• Healthcare (& possibly a bioinformatics/genomics track)
• Statistics (e.g., census and labor/economic statistics)
• Transportation & aviation
• Knowledge management & learning technology
• Electronic commerce (possibly)

The tracks will gather standards developers, software developers, and practitioners in these fields to demonstrate accomplishments and to discuss experiences.

B. Harmonize ISO/IEC 11179 metadata registries with OASIS/ebXML Registry/Repositories.

 

The following activities are intended to stimulate harmonization among the relevant standards by raising the issue, pushing for action, and by inviting participation in the above conference to demonstrate how the technologies can be utilized in a cooperative/interoperable manner.

 

1. Work with ISO/IEC committees, the OASIS XML Registry Technical Committee and other standards bodies to identify points of articulation between the emerging XML registry and ISO/IEC 11179 standards. Develop material to help and encourage the standards efforts develop interoperable (or at least cooperating) specifications. Present material describing the potential for cooperation and interoperability.

 

Status:

Bruce Bargmeyer met with the OASIS/ebXML Registry (previously Reg/Rep) Technical Committee (at a face to face meeting) and presented material about the need for cooperating registries. This topic is assigned to a sub-group on cooperating registries. The OASIS/ebXML Registry effort is expected to be a prominent feature at the conference. Lisa Carnahan of NIST and Joel Munter of Intel are on the Open Forum Organizing Committee.

 

Bruce Bargmeyer met with INCITS L8, the ANSI group responsible for ISO/IEC 11179 and with INCITS H2, the ANSI group in charge of relational database management standards (SQL). There is interest in making the standards work together and an interest in participating in the Open Forum. See also the work under ISO/IEC JTC 1, SC 32. Jim Melton of H2, and Nancy Lawler, Dan Gillman, and Larry Fitzwater of L8 are on the Open Forum Organizing Committee.

 

A briefing about registry standards harmonization was presented at an ISO/IEC JTC 1, SC 32 meeting. This resulted in plans for a Joint meeting between SC 32 WG 2 (ISO/IEC 11179) and WG 3 (SQL). This is the first such meeting and will take place in May 2002 in Seoul, Korea.

 

This work will continue on an ongoing basis, with progress to be discussed at the Open Forum conference.

 

2. Work with NIST prototype XML registry efforts (e.g., NIST – EPA National Environmental Information Exchange Network) to test and demonstrate interoperability between 11179 metadata registries and XML registries. Test registry cooperation/interoperation to inform efforts of standards developers and practioners. Tests of the NIST prototype are expected to be accomplished over the coming year. Successful completion requires EPA and state environmental agency actions. Results will be reported at the conference, above.

 

Status:

 

After considerable work, a proof of Concept XML registry is becoming operational at NIST. XML Schemas are being registered in both the XML Registry (an OASIS/ebXML registry) and in the EPA Environmental Data Registry (an ISO/IEC 11179 registry). The EDR will record the XML tags and data elements that are included in the XML schemas. Both EPA and states agencies are beginning to register XML artifacts into the registry. The results of this work will assist work in Task 1, above.

 

3. Work with practitioners in environment, healthcare, energy and other subject areas to demonstrate the utility of the registry standards, software and operating procedures. This work will also be demonstrated at the conference.

 

Status: The primary work relates to that described under the above tasks, including development of Tracks for the Open Forum. Demonstrations of ISO/IEC 11179 implementations are being given in monthly meetings of the Metadata Registry Implementers Coalition. This group is increasingly addressing XML issues.