(3) What are the plans for the "WS-I-only" profile?
What is being proposed is not a WS-I only OGSA profile. WS-I (basic & security profiles) define a set of specifications and how
Just to clarify, the use of quotation marks above was intentional due to the lack of a name, and I agree with what you said.
I agree multiple basic profiles are bad idea wrt interoperability and architecture perspective.
But may be critical to wider grid adoption which is why I believe GGF accepts multiple approaches. IMHO it is a pity that this policy still seems to be resisted... may be we should drop the O in OGSA?
Recall, that the 'OGSI profile' did not gain wide adoption. Exploring different approaches can only help to improve understanding. What is important IMHO is to bring all approaches into a standards process so that whatever mechanisms that are used are defined. Once defined natural selection can drive their evolution.
I won't be able to go to the MWS-BOF (I'll be in the OGSA-EGA session), so I'll leave my opinion registered here, very briefly.
The risk is that if we leave it for the market to decide, the market won't choose against one or another profile, but it will choose against OGSA as a whole. The people willing to pay for OGSA functionality won't be able to get different components from different parties to work together because they won't fit the same profile, won't speak the same protocols, etc.. The fact that the architecture is theoretically unified will mean nothing because, from their point of view, in practice things simply do not work, period. OGSA as a brand will be meaningless. Who wins then? I have a few guesses, but I am not stupid enough to list them in public forum.
FACT: OGSA is predicated on Web services best practices, tooling, and infrastructure. FACT: Not everyone is enamored with WSRF, meaning that WSRF is unlikely to be "just there" in the tooling and infrastructure anytime soon. OGSA-WG can choose to stick its collective head in the sand and hope that this issue goes away, or it can attempt to address this problem head-on and come up with a solution. This is essentially what this BOF is about. I'll point out that I'll be happy either way: If we decide that it does not make sense to continue this non-WSRF profile, then my group has already produced a pretty high-quality implementation of WSRF on the .NET framework that we'll continue to refine and support. If we as a group decide to move forward with this non-WSRF profile, then we already have some results with an implementation of WS-Transfer we wrote and we'll hopefully have a larger community working on this effort. Finally, to twist things around, if this effort is squashed solely because WSRF is "first to market", then... to quote Fred: " Who wins then? I have a few guesses, but I am not stupid enough to list them in public forum." Again, to stress, I personally just want convergence. If the group decides that OGSA would better converge by focusing on WSRF, then I will happily support this decision (in fact, my research group's lives would probably be easier!) I just want this decision to be made based on realistic and technically sound evidence, not religion. -- Marty Marty Humphrey Assistant Professor Department of Computer Science University of Virginia