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Minutes for OASIS SDD TC 04/19/2007 Meeting

AGENDA11:05 AM ET Roll Call

1. Minutes approval Meeting Minutes from April 12 meeting

2. Administrative (Julia/Brent) - Updates for next F2F meeting (April 30 2:00 - May 4 noon; hosted by SAS in Cary, NC) ** need attendance - Specification review in progress until April 26 -- next week's meeting will focus on review results/comments- OASIS Symposium BRIEF recap (more during F2F meeting)

3. Preparation for F2F/agenda setting A. Company input on when you need/want/expect a ratified SDD 1.0 standard B. Based on input from (3.A), determine general approach for remaining work and focus areas for F2F meeting C. Determine who will provide necessary examples for F2F D. Inventory of proposals to be presented at F2F E. Other necessary discussion to generate agenda that will make F2F successful

4. Old/new business

** 12:00 noon ET -- adjourn

MINUTESWe have a quorum.

1. Minutes for April 12th are approved without comment or objection.2. Administrative topics

This is the 3rd week of the three week specification review period.

Clarification question on last week’s progress indication proposal: Are weights for progress indication needed in CL1? Answer: yes – CL1 can have multiple artifacts which may be used during a single deployment creating the need for weights in CL1.

3. F2F Preparation A. We need to update our schedule. We start by finding out what

team members expectations are on timing of SDD committee draft:i. Sun – notes that original date was sometime last year; no

strong expectation; desire to see something at the end of this F2F or a couple weeks later – at least CL1 closure. Expectation that there will be lag time between publishing and industry adoption.

ii. SAS – expecting CL1 and CL2 committee draft in August. Need CL2 function.

iii. SAP – want something in fairly usable state early next year. Need CL2 function.

iv. Macrovision – CL1 nice, but most customers will need CL2. Would be great to have something by September.

v. IBM – various internal drivers for date. Would like something ASAP. Perhaps can do something with CL1. Want CL1 and CL2 committee draft at least sometime this year. The sooner the better, but also want to get it right.

vi. Dell – would like it yesterday, but also want it to be right. Need CL1 and CL2 function. Also need profiles. Need by end of this year, but the sooner the better.

vii. CA – anxious to see standard done; no specific gating events but the longer it takes the more things get started without the SDD.

B. Determine general approach to completion. i. Expectations (stated above re: SDD completion) range from

late summer to early next year.ii. Can we close CL1 in F2F?iii. Suggestion: we need set “mode of operation” for F2F. i.e.

Set time limits for discussions and take vote at end of time if no consensus has been reached.

iv. Is it a reasonable goal to shift our focus to CL2 during the F2F?

v. Will we be covering profile/dictionary in F2F? vi. Suggestion: don’t discuss minor proposals; just vote and

move on; i.e. Have a “weight” attribute for topics and dedicate time based on weight. Comment: Discussing weights might take up as much time as discussing the topic. Comment: We could start by asking the question – can this function be dealt with in SDD V1 via extension points and leave the details for SDD v2? Comment: we need a time cap regardless of importance. Topics that are still being actively debated aren’t ready for the whole TC. (Implication of this statement: Interested parties should be working out proposal details on the side.)

vii. Suggestion: One time cap for clarification discussions; Different time cap for debate;

viii. Brent will take a cut at an agenda and circulate it for comment.

C. Examples: who will create them?i. Adrian and Merri from SAS are working on examples for

aggregation and configuration; Someone from SAP will start on an example next week; IBM has posted some examples with the schema.

ii. Rich from Macrovision will bring an example.iii. When creating profiles, please identify values in your

examples that would be associated with profiles/dictionary.

iv. Question: What our team members expectations about what is required to make us confident that the specification “works”. Dell – needs to address all the function in their current xml documents. John will be doing this analysis and will bring forward any gaps he discovers. He notes that the profile definitions are important.

v. Randy notes that, for the F2F, clarifying examples, i.e. fully describing the use case, before creating the xml is important. When creating examples for the F2F, please start with this. More important to come to the meeting with this description than with the completed xml.

vi. Goal of examples review in F2F is not to go through every line of the xml, but to understand use cases and identify gaps.

D. Inventory of Proposalsi. Conditional content proposal from Randyii. Debra will have to step out of the committee for about 2

months; so she will not attend the F2F and will not have the human readable information proposal. Issue: a subset of John’s proposal was deferred to the human readable discussion. Since we won’t have that, John will bring back that part of his proposal. (For extended artifact information.)

iii. James does not expect to have roles and privileges proposal. He is ok with SDD v1 going out without this.

iv. Profile proposal from Rob Cutlip. Goal is to get agreement on direction.

v. Extensibility proposal from Randy. vi. Package types proposal from Brent.

E. Other agenda discussioni. We will devote some time to spec review.ii. Spend some time on project plan. – At least a plan for a

plan.iii. Focus the bulk of F2F time to be spent on CL2.



1. Minutes approval Meeting Minutes from April 5 meeting

2. Administrative (Julia/Brent)- Action item review as necessary - Updates for next F2F meeting (April 30 2:00 - May 4 noon; hosted by SAS in Cary, NC) ** need attendance- Specification review in progress until April 26- OASIS Symposium next week

3. Progress indication proposal (James/Chris) -- we began review of this last week; will continue today

4. Old/new business



Nico Groh from SAP joins us for the first time today. Nico has worked at SAP for 6 years with the last 1.5 yrs spent in the area of installation and upgrade. Nico is replacing Frank who has taken another position. This is Nico’s first time on a standards committee.

1. Minutes for 4/5/2007 are approved without objection. We noted that the date and specification review instructions have been corrected.

2. Administrative Jason needs a good estimate of attendance for the F2F meeting.

(SAS is hosting.) 3-5 from IBM, 1 on phone. 1-2 from Macrovision, 1 on phone. 3-4 from SAP. 1 on phone from Sun. We aren’t sure about CA. (Debra is not here but Brent thinks she might be attending by phone.) Probably 1 from Dell. (John is not here today to confirm.)

Specification – Note that Randy has incorporated into the spec and schema the changes suggested by Dell last week and accepted by the TC. These changes mostly affect the Package Descriptor section which is not currently under review. That version will be posted (probably early next week). Please don’t let this interrupt your review. It’s fine to keep reviewing using the current draft – revision 37.

Brent will be attending the OASIS Symposium next week3. Continue progress indication proposal:

Weights – scope of weights is within a given SDD. Weights from different SDDs are not relative to each other and cannot be compared

until both SDDs are included in an aggregation. Purpose of weights is to provide hints to runtime. Can be ignored, used or augmented by runtimes. What are heuristics for assigning weights? James says “gut feel based on empirical testing on ‘representative machines’” – but we’ll need to work on this wording for the specification.Question is raised about the inclusion of weights in aggregating SDDs is affected by changes to the aggregated SDDs. It is noted that other things besides weight need to change in the aggregating SDD when the aggregation changes. Choosing to use weights does come with the need to adjust the weights if necessary when the aggregation changes.Question is raised about how topology interacts with the weights. Since weigths are relative within a solution, if the topology changes, the weights are likely to change.Question is raised about the reason for using decimals – as opposed to integers. James says it is because that is how he usually sees weights but doesn’t have as strong preference. Randy notes it might be simpler for humans to understand integers. James notes that decimals allow negative numbers, which is not valid for weights. (Can decimal type be restricted to non-negative?) Using positive integer circumvents that problem. Also makes it somewhat easier for human readers. We agree to change it to positive integer. In absence of a weight, the weight is assumed to be the average of ??? [Note to Minutes readers: I didn’t catch this – James said it. If someone remembers, please send me a note and I’ll modify the minutes]. Should weights be used everywhere if used anywhere? Answer – possibly as a best practice.Proposal is to add weights to artifact type and referenced package type. When putting it on reference package, which operation does it apply too? Randy motions for approval of this proposal with the change from decimal to positive integer. Julia seconds. No discussion. No objections. Motion passes. It is noted that spec wording for this item needs to be provided.

Next week – F2F agenda. Week after – spec walk-through.



1. Minutes approval Meeting Minutes from March 29 meeting

2. Administrative (Julia). Also: - Updates for next F2F meeting (April 30 2:00 - May 4 noon; hosted by SAS in Cary, NC)- Action item review as necessary

3. Specification update (Julia et al)- content of latest spec for posting- review process

4. Package Descriptor updates proposal (John) -- reviewed last week; will review updates this week and vote

5. Progress indication proposal (James/Chris)

6. Old/new business


1. Minutes for March 29th are approved without comment or objection.2. Administrative – many action items are overdue. Please review these,

make plans to accomplish your items and change the due date accordingly.

3. Specification review – Revision 37 is posted in TC documents – title “SDD Specification Draft”. Please review sections 4,5,6 and 7 for technical content (only). Please post comments using the comment facility in TC documents. (In the document view, choose “Details” on the far right in the document row. There is a Add Comment button at the bottom of that page.) We will have a 3 week review period, then intensive review during the TC meeting. Please open the doc in Word in a view that displays comment bubbles in the right-hand margin. There are a few notes to reviewers that you will not see unless you do this.

4. Package Descriptor – a look at updates to the proposal based on last week’s discussion. (Minutes for last week record this discussion.) John posted the update in TC documents – title “Some suggested changes for SDD”. Changes made are - Page 3: “id” is changed to “label”. Page 5: Content type is now a single element. Page 6: addition of artifact instruction information will be deferred and discussed as part of the human-readable information proposal. Brent asks for a motion to accept the changes on page 3 and page 5. John moves, Julia seconds, vote passes without comment or objection. John notes that Debra has two proposals – human-readable content and

human-readable information. The artifact instructions fit into the second one. These are broad proposals. Debra plans to have this ready for the next F2F and will include artifact instructions as part of the recommended included information. There is a consensus that artifact instructions are needed and will be included in the human-readable information proposal.

5. Progress indication proposal – The proposal was created by James and Chris and is posted in TC documents – title “Declarative Progress in SDD Proposal”. James took us through the proposal. Discussion and comments include the following.

a. We note that the weights shown in the diagram on page 7 (i.e. the numbers next to the labels, e.g. in “C6 1.0”, 1.0 is the weight) are assigned by the aggregating element (e.g. C6 is assigned the weight 1.0 by A2 and A2 is assigned the weight 2.0 by A1).

b. We note that weights in artifacts for different operations (e.g. install, configure, uninstall) in same sdd still need to be relative since aggregators can combine operations in any way.

c. We note that weights must be relative and absolute because actual time depends on so many factors beyond the scope of the SDD – such as hardware type.

d. We begin a discussion of where to put weights for aggregated packages (e.g. possibly in reference package element). Also, the ability to aggregate by including multiple deployment descriptors in a package descriptor rather than aggregating via deployment descriptor may require weights also in the package descriptor.

e. We begin a discussion of other schema elements that may require weights. Resource discovery and requirement evaluation take time. Are these totally in the scope of the runtime or can the SDD author provide weights that are as reasonable as weights for artifacts?

f. Discussion to continue next week.



1. Minutes approval Meeting Minutes from March 22 meeting

2. Administrative (Julia)

3. Ballot results for next F2F meeting; determine location and host(s) for meeting.

4. Package Descriptor updates proposal (John)

5. Old/new business



Welcome to new members Adrian and Merri from SAS.

Adrian Dunsten works in installation technologies. One of the people looking at forward-facing processes to improve how change management is handled on customer end. He has a java background and is working an unix foundation installer. He has put together SI prototypes (SI is runtime that uses the IUDD specification (pre-curser to SDD.)

Mary Jensen has worked primarily with InstallShield technologies focusing primarily on the cross-platform installers for SAS. She also works in the Installation Technologies group and has been the Install Coordinator for the last couple of years. Along with a few others she worked quite a bit with the IBM team on the original SI proof of concept for the SAS Business Intelligence offering and has been continuing to work on the SI prototypes. She is looking forward to contributing to the SDD specification and participating in this group.

1. Minutes from 3/22/2007 are approved without objection or comment.2. Administrative: All our action items are overdue.3. F2F Ballot closed. The clear winner (9 votes) is the week of April

30-May 4. Plan on that week – mid-afternoon Monday through Friday noon. SAS will be more than happy to host this F2F at their Cary facility (Raleigh, NC area). Brent notes that it is a beautiful campus with easy access. We vote on using this facility for the F2F. The vote passes w/o objection.Jason will send the guys in Germany information on hotels, etc.

4. Package Descriptor updates proposal – John posted this proposal on the TC web site documents page.

We agree that the proposed package ID field needs to be in the schema, we disagree on the name. After much discussion we agree to name this attribute “label” rather than “id”. We agree on these things in principal. Next step is to see the actual schema change and the actual specification text. (This is step for every proposal.)Content type: John proposes the addition of <ContentInformation> that provides a category and sub-type to classify packages. These values would be enumerated. Question about whether they can be extended. Debra notes that these values really depend on the vendor. There are many possibilities for category and type. Would the profile be involved? Randy notes that CIM did this as a single value. If you want category and type in the value you can use a separator. CIM has standardized some values. Profiles could be used to express supported values. Suggestion: Add content information to the schema. Use a single value like CIM does rather than the category and type structure shown in the proposal. Call this single element <ContentType>. No objections are voiced.Artifact instructions: This is a proposal to add a field to allow inclusion of fairly extensive text into artifacts to provide instructions to humans on how to apply the artifact. We note that this is logically a subset of the human-readable proposal. (The human-readable proposal is still waiting for TC members to provide feedback on the extensive information provided at the last F2F.) Debra says she plans to have the human-readable proposal for the next F2F with or without TC member feedback. We adjourn without finishing this conversation.



1. Minutes approval Meeting Minutes from February 22, March 8 and March 15 meetings (note: March 1 meeting cancelled; did not have quorum at March 8/15 meetings).

2. Administrative (Julia). Also: - Ballot open for selecting date for next F2F meeting. Ballot open until March 27; please vote for all of the selections for which you could make it.

3. Custom entities proposal (Julia/Rich) -- this was presented previously but could not be formally voted on owing to lack of quorum.

5. Version proposal (Brent)(if time allows)

6. Old/new business - continue profile discussion? - any other items



1. Minutes for February 22, March 8 and March 15 are approved without objection.

2. Ballot still open on F2F dates. SAP mentions they cannot make it the week of the 23rd. Brent notes that the first week in May is the current leader.

3. Custom “stuff” proposal – continue discussion. Julia recaps proposal based on posted proposal presentation. Randy argues in favor of alternative 1 – removing the current custom check element and documenting these concepts in the spec rather than adding custom logic for other elements that correspond to the environment. We vote and agree to accept alternative 1 presented at the F2F rather than the current “custom stuff” proposal (alternative 2).

4. Version proposal – Brent has posted this in the Working Documents title. Debra notes that the ability to compare versions is conceptually the same as the ability to discover the values of resource properties – a function we have decided to leave entirely up to the implementation. This is an argument against stepping into the very complex arena of version comparison. We discuss and agree to just make version a string and acknowledge that implementations need to understand how to compare versions


MINUTESWe do NOT have a quorum. The unusual daylight savings time change resulted in the SAP folks in Germany calling in late. Chris, Frank H., Lazar and Thomas K. of SAP are credited with attendance.


AGENDA1. Minutes approval Meeting Minutes from February 22 meeting (note: March 1 meeting cancelled).

2. Administrative (Julia). Also:- Ballot has opened for selecting date for next F2F meeting. Ballot open for 3 weeks; please vote for all of the selections for which you could make it.

3. OASIS Symposium update from Jane Harnad, OASIS (5 min.)

4. Custom entities proposal (Julia)

5. Version proposal (Brent) (if time allows)

6. Old/new business- continue profile discussion?- any other items

MINUTESWe do NOT have a quorum. 1. Minutes from 2/22 cannot be approved without a quorum.2. Ballot for next F2F is now open. Currently pursuing either Austin (to

be co-hosted by IBM and Dell) or Raleigh (co-hosted by IBM and SAS) as the location.

3. Jane Harnad of OASIS: OASIS symposium to be held April 15-20, 2007, in San Diego, Calif. Event details available from URL on OASIS home page.

4. Custom Stuff proposal (Rich and Julia): Rich has posted a presentation in the working documents section. Some comments from a walk through the presentation:

a. All the concepts apply to current artifacts; nothing new being introduced.

b. Q: How to separate (for example) lifecycle operation artifacts from resulting resources?A: The timing, inputs, and functions are different.

c. Q: Does the presentation list all the areas affected by the proposal?A: The list on slide 3 ("SDD elements that correspond to the deployment environment") was generated from Julia's going through the entire schema; the table on slide 5 is exhaustive. The left column is the scope; the rows are grouped by function; input is the base type name.

d. "CustomStuff" is obviously not the final name. Brent suggests "CustomItems" as a stopgap to keep us from getting too comfortable with "stuff".

e. Slide 8 (CustomStuff element in schema): there's an implied maxOccurs="1" (which is explicitly displayed in the illustration on the previous slide).

f. Slide 9 ("Supporting Types"): AllElementsSupported should be removed. Also, only appropriate element types supported in each

element of type CustomArtifactType; not enforced in schema, but to be described in spec.

g. Much discussion of the semantics of having this in SDD: does it mean "must be run" or "should be run"? Suggestion that if it's optional, should be called "hints".

h. Is custom stuff an override? Only makes a difference if there are side effects; discovery, for example, should not have side effects.

i. There is concern that the same semantics cannot be used for all the types of custom stuff being discussed. To revisit.

j. Slide 13 ("Implementation Implications"): there is concern about interoperability. Does the implementation decide whether a custom artifact is performed once or multiple times if associated with multiple elements?

k. Discussion about the value of the SDD being in the information/metadata, even if it replies completely on custom artifacts/logic); implementation still needs means to make decisions; initial reference implementation can be bare-bones, focused on parsing and logic tree, rather that physical aspects of deployment.

l. Require more details of classes of custom stuff; Rich to post an example, and it is suggested to customize the JRE example with custom stuff.

m. There is a suggestion to add an attribute indicating whether implementation has a choice to override built-in with custom; in any case, should document in spec.



1. Minutes approval Meeting Minutes from February 15 meeting.

2. Administrative (Julia) Also recent OASIS changes of note, for information (Brent):- specification template changes, XML namespace conventions- TC process changes: conformance statement, 3 statements of use

3. Ballot for next F2F meeting (need a motion)

4. Old/new business- continue profile discussion?- any other items


MINUTESWe do not initially have a quorum. Quorum achieved at 11:10. (As always, attendance specifics can be seen on the TC web site in the meeting document – available from the Calendar view.)

1. Minutes for February 15, 2007 are approved without comment or objection.

2. Administrativea. Please plan to complete your action items on schedule.

b. OASIS process changes:i. There is a new OASIS specification template. Brent has

forwarded it to Robert and Julia. He does not think we should update immediately since we are in the midst of major spec updates.

ii. There are also new OASIS TC process changes. OASIS formed a TC a while back to form a standard for OASIS specifications. One of the new requirements is that there must be a statement of conformance. Brent thinks our chapter on conformance that he has been working on will probably meet that requirement. Three statements of use are also required. These are written statements from TC members stating that they have successfully used the specification. For us, this probably means that we need at least 3 different members to create an implementation. We don’t think, at this point, that this has to be a shipping product. Clarification is needed on the details of the statement of use requirement.

3. Ballots now require a formal motion. So, we need a motion so that Brent can create the ballot. Motion made and seconded and passes without objection. Brent asks John if Dell can host the next meeting in Austin. This could be co-hosted with IBM Austin. e.g. part of the time at Dell, part of the time at IBM. John says it may be possible depending on the week chosen. The other choice is a similar arrangement using the SAS and IBM Raleigh facilities. Ballot will cover the last week in April and first two weeks in May.

4. We had some follow-on discussion of profiles. Issues discussed included:

a. representation of resource relationships in the dictionary; should these be represented via hierarchy or data within a flat list? Suggestion was made that we start with a flat list to avoid problems if it turns out a hierarchy can’t accurately represent relationships. We can always change to a hierarchy after we have a better idea of the types of relationships that will be modeled in the dictionary. It is noted that there are several relationship types implied by the contents of the SDD: hosted, component; consumes; and uses.

b. granularity of dictionary data; how “low” will it go? At the OS resource level we clearly need to go to the brand level (i.e. Windows, AIX). Will we go to the brand level for other types of resources? Maybe for something like a DB engine that hosts other types of resources. Maybe not for resources that do not host others.

c. Do we need to add something to the SDD to indicate the profiles required to support the SDD? Maybe. We’ll know better once we have a better idea of what profiles are.

d. How will the central dictionary be maintained? What will the infrastructure be? Who will support it? Who will pay for it?

e. Brent notes that our plans - for a specification with conformance levels as well as profiles to help determine interoperability - are consistent with the new OASIS conformance spec.



1. Minutes approval Meeting Minutes from February 8 meeting.

2. Administrative (Julia)

3. Review of company input about dictionary/profiles


MINUTESWe have a quorum. 5. Minutes from 2/8/2007 are approved without comment or objection.6. Processing of action items based on last week’s discussion has begun.

Watch for update notifications for your action items later today.7. Discussion of the dictionary and profiles. Brent has posted a

presentation to guide the discussion. (Use the latest posted in the Documents view not the one linked to the most recent notification from Brent.) The discussion focused on clarifying the dictionary and profile concepts. I have attempted to note the highlights here.

a. An analogy: The dictionary is like a set of words to be used when creating profiles which are like sentences. In addition to the dictionary, we want to provide a set of starter/example/recommended profiles that spell out sentences that we believe are useful and make sense. Note that it will be possible to create profiles that do not make sense – like a sentence with bad grammar.

b. Obviously the dictionary will not be able to define all possible “words” in advance. When a profile creator needs a new “word”, should it be defined in the profile or defined as an extension of the dictionary? Assertion: New “words” should be extensions of the dictionary.

c. Someone suggested that a wikipedia model could be used to grow the dictionary. It was noted that version control is essential for interoperability so any wiki-based process would have to take that into account.

d. Where are relationships between “words” recorded? e.g. A hosts relationship between a database table resource and the database or a create association between a DDL artifact file and a database table. Assertion: only relationships that are always, irrevocably true should be recorded in the dictionary. Most relationships supported/understood by an implementation will be defined in the profiles.

Next steps: Brent and Randy will create a subset of a real example of the dictionary, profiles and SDDs that use the profiles. All are invited to do the same and bring their examples back to the group.



1. Minutes approval A. Acceptance of Meeting Minutes from January 25 meeting. B. Acceptance of Meeting Minutes from January 29 - Feb. 2 F2F meeting.

2. Administrative (Julia) [Note: we will have a review of selected new action items later in the agenda]

3. Specification updates (status, outlook, open items based on results of F2F meeting)

4. Review of selected new action items from F2F (objective is to plan for future calls -- proposals, profile discussion, etc.)

5. Other old/new business.



1. Minutes approvala. Minutes for January 25th are approved without objection.b. Minutes for January 29th F2F are approved without objection.

2. Outstanding pre-January F2F action items.a. Close 139 and open an action item for completing GGF alignment.b. 162 looks like it was covered by the addition of file purpose

types. Debra looks at use case 2.5.8 finds that this is really about overriding content in composed solutions. This is a CL2 issue and is still needed. Change date and add [CL2].

c. Close 173. Examples are posted in the Examples category on the TC web site document page.

d. Close 174e. 175, 176 – change due date to 2 weeks from today – put on

agenda.f. 182 – need for this will be handled by profiles. Close.g. 183 – split into CL1 and CL2 issues. Change CL1 date to next

week.h. 187, 201 – mark as CL2. Change date to middle of Marchi. 189 – change date to end of Februaryj. 190 Change after discussion next week.k. 191 – Close.l. 193 – Close.m. 197 – Close.

3. Spec updates are underway. Aggressive outlook is that a new version will be ready for TC review 2 weeks from today. We’ll checkpoint on this date next week.

4. Open proposals - a. Profiles: We need everyone (one per company) to come back with

ideas about what the dictionary and profile look like. There is a list on page 20 of the F2F meeting minutes of 10 or so aspects of profiles and dictionaries. Julia will open action items for each company to have these ideas prepared and posted in “Working Documents” for next week’s meeting.

b. Package types – change owner from Debra to Brent.c. Human readable – Debra is still looking for feedback on the

information grid she presented at the F2F. Who is planning to provide feedback? John will review. Feedback is needed in the next week and a half, and then Debra will put together a proposal for 3 weeks from today.

d. Version – Brent assigned to this. Debra suggests that this proposal wait until after the custom logic proposal.

e. Custom “Stuff” – Julia and Rich will work together on this with the goal of having a proposal 3 weeks from today.

f. Progress Indication – James and Chris will do this proposal.5. Agendas for the next 4 meetings will include the following.

Next week –profiles and dictionary Two weeks out – package types proposal; continue profile

discussion; spec ready for review. Three weeks out – Custom “stuff” proposal; human readable

proposal; Four weeks out – Version proposal;



1. Acceptance of Meeting Minutes from January 18 meeting.

2. Administrative (Julia) Also: - any last-minute updates/considerations for next week's F2F meeting? (James -- see recent e-mail)

3. Preparations for next week's F2F meeting: A. Overall agenda review -- see posted document(note Monday start 2:00 p.m.) B. Detailed agenda review -- see posted document: i. Examples -- agreement on primary reviewers ii. Proposals -- verify all will be ready; validate allotted time iii. Validate remaining/overall agenda



1. Minutes from 1/18/2007 are accepted without comment.2. Question is raised about how to bring up new discussion topics at

the F2F. First option: get the item on the agenda. Second option: bring it up during general discussion or discussion of other specific proposals or discussion items.Question was raised about Internet access – there will be a wireless internet connection. Also, there will be a phone with satellite microphones. Brent will set up a hosted web conference for sharing content.

3.a. Brent posted a Word document that contains the agenda

overview. Start time is moved to 2PM on Monday. A polished draft of a subset of the specification containing only content relevant to the package descriptor will be posted EOD Friday. Look for a document titled SDD Specification Draft – Package Descriptor Only. Please consider reviewing this on the plane as you travel to the F2F. One of the first topics will be comments on this portion of the spec. (Note that the deployment descriptor content has not been completely updated to the new format and so will not be posted. However, the technical content of the deployment descriptor section is up to date. It was updated after the last F2F and can be seen on the TC web site in the document titled SDD Specification Draft posted by Robert Dickau on 11/30/2006. This is revision 33.)

b. Brent also posted an Excel spreadsheet with the agenda details.

i. We went through the proposal list making sure those assigned to proposals can be ready.

ii. We swapped some assignments on the examples page and added a pair of update examples. Julia (was) volunteered (by Brent) to draft a start of the fix and update examples which will be filled in with additional information once the fix proposal is finalized.

iii. Homework for everyone – review examples, have proposals ready.




2. Administrative (Julia) Also: - next F2F meeting confirmed for January 29 - February 2, hosted by Sun in Orlando, Florida, US. Please make arrangements accordingly.

3. Any additional specification comments?

4. Discuss Proposal for A193 (Weijia (John) Zhang)

5. Review new Examples (Randy George)



Introducing Jason from SAS, a new TC member. He is Software Manager for Installation and Deployment

4. Minutes from 1/11/2007 are accepted without comment.5. No new news on the F2F.6. No new comments on the specification.7. John’s proposal on support for response files was discussed at length. A few

changes were discussed and agreed to. John will update the proposal. Text re: problems with AdditionalFiles on pg. 4 will be removed. There was some confusion about where the response files fit into the

overall process. These are response files that are supported or required by artifacts. They are not something the SDD author makes up. This proposal provides a way for the SDD author to associate response files with artifacts and identify parameter substitution.

New parameter elements are added within the AdditionalFileType that can specify substitution information. It was noted that the primary artifact file may also need to use substitution. John will modify the proposal so that substitution is supported in the primary artifact file as well as the additional files.

It was noted that the artifactType=”ResponseFile” statement in the example was misleading. There is already a file purpose value of ResponseFile. The artifactType attribute is intended to provide a specific response file type such as properties file.

The language on pg. 9 re: SDD values taking precedence was noted as confusing. John will change the wording.

We stopped before discussing page 11.




2. Administrative (Julia) Also:- next F2F meeting confirmed for January 29 - February 2, hosted by Sun in Orlando, Florida, US. Please make arrangements accordingly.

3. Review comments on proposed new specification introduction (Chapter 2)

4. New proposals:A. Need to ensure that outstanding proposals will be ready by the F2F meeting at the latestB. Proposal to split up review and feedback on examples for F2FC. Begin reviewing any proposals that are ready now (John, Randy may have some)

** 11:50 a.m. US Eastern time - adjourn (I am requesting that we adjourn 10 minutes early if possible and agreeable to everyone)


1. Meeting Minutes from January 4 2007 are accepted without comment.2. Reminder about the January F2F. We will meet from approximately 1PM

on Monday to noon on Friday. Brent will post a draft agenda soon. We have a lot of work to get done. All voting members are expected to attend. There will be WiFi internet access. Daily security badges will be required – which should be easily printed from a kiosk at the entrance. We look forward to another productive meeting like we had in October.

3. Specification Overview Review – Section 2 of Spec Format Proposal Example 1.doc

a. Discussion of the suggestion to remove section 2.1 problem domain – Debra: terminology is introduced in this section, so if it

is removed, we would need to have these terms introduced in the new, not yet added, terminology section containing the subset of terms that are potentially ambiguous.

Another comment (Thomas K from SAP?) – just putting this in a terminology section will lose the information on how these things relate to each other. The problem domain section clearly explains these relationships and is useful. If this is removed, maybe it could be in a primer.

Debra asks what the objection to this section is. Randy answers – it’s a good overview but lengthy and not entirely related to the spec, more a general introduction that

belongs in a separate Overview doc – assume we are publishing this separate doc. Debra: this is good information for folks who are looking at this specification out of the blue. However, if we are going to publish an Overview doc outside of the specification, then it is appropriate to move this information out of the specification. Randy is concerned that the length may hinder the review process.

Brent asks: do we want to have a separate Overview doc? Does it go through a review process? Not clear. Probably a stream-lined process. Motion: Publish a separate Overview document with problem domain information – this will purely conceptual and not contain specifics of the schema; Remove section 2.1 from the specification; Refer to Overview document in the specification overview. Seconded by Debra; Brent asks for No votes. None are voiced, the motion passes.

Clarification-all the other things we have discussed re: addition of terminology (Mini-terminology section up front, full glossary at end)and sections from James’ write up of roles still are in force. Comment made and agreed to: Overview needs to be available at the same time as the spec.

b. Brent calls for substantive comments on section 2.2 Problem Solutions: Comment - Are there any mentions of conformance levels?

Response - Should not be in the Overview section but will be explained in the specification. Add placeholder statement in Overview stating that the overview applies to all conformance levels.

Suggestion to flip the order of Topology and Content. Objection raised, but all agreed that concepts regarding the variety of content - maintenance, configuration, localization, etc. – be added to the intro before section 2.2.

Debra: no content related to the relation between the specification and implementations of the specification. Add some sentences to the spec overview about this. Also add a section to the Overview doc on this. Debra will send Julia a note with some of these ideas.

Christine: Where are we going to talk about profiles? Profiles will be a F2F topic. Profiles answer the big question about how you relate the information in the SDD to information in the environment. Existence of profiles need to be acknowledged in the spec although the profile specifications themselves will be separate documents. Top 3 questions people ask when they first hear about the SDD: What’s this for? How do you get consistency? Where’s the API? Spec overview should answer these questions. Profiles are intended to allow for consistent deployment and need to be mentioned.

c. Brent: If the editors can provide an outline for the spec overview soon, the TC can review it prior to the F2F. Also, Brent will provide examples of the other proposed front matter additions.

4. We have a lot of proposals planned for the F2F. It’s critical that proposals be ready for F2F. Debra: human readable info; James: roles; many others. Brent will put each of these in the agenda. Please review the agenda as soon as it is posted and see where you are in

the schedule. Brent received a suggestion for the F2F – ask each person to thoroughly review some subset of the example descriptors created by IBM (not yet posted)and present the results of their review at the F2F. i.e. Let the reviewer rather than the author present each example. No one volunteers. Action item: Randy: will post the CL1 examples. Different folks will be assigned an example to review for the F2F. Everyone – take a look; volunteer for one if you can. We will discuss again next week.



1. Acceptance of Meeting Minutes from December 14 meeting.

2. Administrative- action items review and other administrative (Julia)- next F2F meeting confirmed for January 29 - February 2, hosted by Sun in Orlando, Florida, US. Please make arrangements accordingly.

3. Review & Discussion: Example for proposal for specification restructuring (Julia/Robert/Brent) (25 mins)

** 11:00 a.m. US Eastern time - adjourn


1. Meeting Minutes from December 14 meeting are approved without comment. 2. Administrative

a. Team members are reminded to plan to get action items done by the new due dates.

b. There is an OASIS symposium in April in San Diego. All members can submit papers and proposal. Each TC is invited to give an update. It would be very good for us to do this. Can anyone do this? Think about it.

c. Reminder – logistics have been sent for the January F2F. Go ahead and make your plans. James is working on a hotel group rate. There are 3 or 4 hotels almost within walking distance. He’ll send options via TC email.

d. Brent is working on a draft agenda for the F2F. Please send him ideas for the agenda if you have any. We want to close out CL1 and then make progress on CL2.

e. Please be ready to discuss your proposals (see action items).f. We make most of our progress at the F2F meetings. Please plan to attend.g. Question was raised: has there been any effort to assign use cases to CL2.

No, but we’ve said that everything that is not CL1 is CL2 unless we find a strong need to split out another CL. All use cases not marked as CL1 should be considered CL2 use cases for now.

3. Spec Format Example Proposal – doc was posted today by Robert Dickaua. A new section 2 in the proposal doc includes an Overview that is a stripped

down version of IBM’s submission overview. Please review the content of this section by next week. Randy suggested that roles based diagrams and information provided by James would provide value if worked into the Overview. Add role-based section, definitions, diagram, based on James's information. Action item: Julia: Find this information and work it in.

b. Sections 4 – 4.10. We made it through these proposed content changes and agreed to the format with the changes notes below. Note that there are also proposed changes to front and back matter that we will discuss once Brent has time to draft examples.

General: 4.7.1: make xmlspy diagram format consistent across all diagrams. Are we allowed to use xmlspy diagrams? Action item: Brent:

Investigate legal use of xmlspy diagrams; Randy to provide Brent with copy of xmlspy license.

How to fit examples in? In prose, describe examples, what we want to show. Start by adding a fourth new subsection everywhere containing an

example snippet. Decide as we get to each one if it is really necessary. Don’t hesitate to leave this section out where it does not provide sufficient value.

State at the beginning that all is normative except where noted; remove (normative) notation; Brent’s examples demonstrate this?

Where the new subsections (property summary table; xsd fragment; usage notes) would end up at the same heading level as a subsection describing a child element, create another subsection used to nest the new sections. Goal is to prevent the new subsections from ending up at the same heading level as a child element.

Tables: Consensus is to use 4.1 or 4.5 table style: think about abbrs, smaller

font Remove cardinality column, element/attr column Leave in r/o column Add default value information to Description column (instead of adding

a default value column) Hyperlink to xsd fragments for all types Remove choice column, add to diagram conventions (as everything

else) Remove "source"/"ref-def" column: make sure content added to usage

notes XSD fragments:

Move XSD fragments to after table; make usage notes last Use color XSD with light gray background (same background as overall

doc)