Dear M. Andrianarisoa:

I believe that Norman was speaking to the "convergence roadmap" that some of the big industrial players (Microsoft, IBM, HP, Sun, etc.) produced recently, which aims to reconcile the differences between WSRF/WS-Notification (the OASIS standard) and WS-Transfer/WS-Man/WS-Eventing (Microsoft and friends). The good news is that the proposed WS-ResourceTransfer specification (NOT in a standards body, but published in draft form) provides the essential WSRF functionality, and apparently has the backing of some major players:

http://ianfoster.typepad.com/blog/2006/09/wsresourcetrans.html

These developments are frustrating for those developing standards, as they mean that revisions will likely be needed down the road. (Although the impact of these changes can be overstated: all standards evolve over time, including fundamental ones like WSDL.)

For those developing software, I assert that these developments are not important. People building services recognize, as you do, that there are big advantages to using pre-packaged implementations of state management and access functions, for which there are now good implementations from GT4, WSRF.NET, etc., rather than building their own from scratch. That's certainly our experience, and the experience of the many others that work with GT4. If WSRT gains traction, then at some point it will likely be advantageous to update the operations used for state access. But that will probably be a couple of years, and software like GT4 will make that easy to do. (We've learned things about such transformations over the years.)

Regards -- Ian.

At 04:33 PM 10/5/2006 +0200, Ny Haingo Andrianarisoa wrote:

Dear all,

I would first join Malcolm Atkinson in thanking Norman Paton and the
DAIS-WG main contributors for all the work that has been led and done
until the publication of DAIS specifications as GGF (should it be
henceforth called: OGF?) recommandation documents.

Nevertheless a piece of Norman Paton's sentences disturbed me a little:
"a demise of WSRF". What should I (we?) understand? Would WSRF
specifications be overshadowed by "simple" WS standards? For the rest,
WSRF seems to me too specific for grid services to be given up -I think
this observation looks obvious for anyone concerned with grids.

To my knowledge, WSRF still goes on (version 1.2 raised on April 2006).
One of our current leading projects is based on an implementation of
WS-DAI and its relational realization (according the latest
specifications) over the WSRF.NET framework (thanks to Marty Humphrey
and his team from the University of Virginia). Should we definitely
change our framework foundations? I hope we would not have to do so.

Thanks for your clarification. My apologizes in case this message is
sent (or felt to be sent) to an inappropriate place -although I believe
many people would be interested in the WSRF status.

With regards,
Ny Haingo Andrianarisoa.
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Ian Foster -- Weblog: http://ianfoster.typepad.com Computation Institute: www.ci.uchicago.edu & www.ci.anl.gov Argonne: MCS/221, 9700 S. Cass Ave, Argonne, IL 60439 Chicago: Rm 405, 5640 S. Ellis Ave, Chicago, IL 60637 Tel: +1 630 252 4619 --- Globus Alliance: www.globus.org