Network Markup Language Working Group ===================================== Attendants: Paola Grosso, cochair, Universiteit van Amsterdam Martin Swany, cochair, University of Delaware, Internet2 Fellow, cochair of NM-WG Cees de Laat, Universiteit van Amsterdam, (retiring) area director of infrastructure David De Roure, University of Southampton, cochair of Semantic Grid Jason Zurawski, Internet2 Anand Patil, Dante Mark Leese, Daresbury Laboratory, UK e-Science ?, University of Pisa, Coregrid Pascale Primet, INRIA Ralph Niederberger, Research Center Juelich Tomohiro Kudoh, GTRC, AIST Richard Hughes-Jones, The University of Manchester Freek Dijkstra, Universiteit van Amsterdam Jeroen van der Ham, Universiteit van Amsterdam Paola and Martin opened the meeting, setting the agenda and began a round of introductions. Most people present were working on provisioning tools and were aware of the importance of topology description. Jeroen gave an introduction to NDL, the Network Description Langauge, as developed by the Universiteit van Amsterdam. He described the history and gave a rough outline of the current status. More information can be found at http://www.science.uva.nl/research/sne/ndl/ Richard asked about the Services object, which is for pointing to policy information Ralph started a discussion on the level of detail of a description. This was postponed to later in the session, and due to time constraints to the next session. Martin presented the schema of the Network Measurements WG. Pascalle noted that there was no Location object in the schema. Martin replied that the Node object could be recursive and in that way fulfil the Locations role. Martin warned that layer 4 information also became a requirement for describing their measurements (difference between TCP, UDP, etc.). The new schema (version 3) is moving towards technology specific namespaces instead of layer specific namespaces. Publishing the new schema will now become a responsibility of the NML-WG. Jason has made a script to translate single layer NDL descriptions to NMWG descriptions. Easy translation between the two schemas should be a first step. It is agreed that both schemas are equally expressive, at least for the topology part, which is our current concern. Freek gives a presentation about Model vs Syntax and invites everyone to review his document on XML vs RDF (https://forge.gridforum.org/sf/go/doc14257?nav=1). He proposes to use G.805 terminology for networks to avoid confusion. Richard stresses that the abstraction level must be an explicit assumption when starting the modelling. Paola invites everyone to provide requirements for the schemas. Pascale asks what kind of networks we want to model, i.e. do we also want to be able to model wireless networks? The group agrees that we do not wish to exclude wireless networks (wireless sensor networks are seen as important application). Martin responds that in the NM-WG it has proved effective to be as extensible as possible and not to limit the schema. We invite everyone to extend the schema where they see fit. Cees presents his vision of RDF descriptions of grid resources, e.g. databases, files, network, cpus, visualisation, etc. He invites David to respond to this. David refers to Freeks presentation, saying that the ontology should come first, RDF is a good technology, but not a necessity for this vision. Time flies and Richard reminds the chairs about setting action points: - NDL and the (nameless) NMWG schema should further align. Both groups will work on the translation between the two formats. - The chairs will work on the scope document and present this to the mailinglist - All participants are requested to review the XML vs RDF document. - Pascale asks about use cases and volunteers to write one for asset management - Cees proposes to create an example network to describe with both schemas, proposals are the new Internet2 network, and/or the joint SC07 demonstration. - Freek proposes to discuss his buckets proposal on the mailinglist - The chairs will announce a phone conference on the mailinglist