On reading Ian's message, I wonder whether I was clear.  I want the criteria for *submitting* a recommendation profile proposal to admit a spec that has a single implementation.  This document will have to go through the normal process before it can become an actual recommendation.  This is a similar (although stricter) process to any other recommendation document in the GGF and similar standards bodies.  So this process should be well-understood in the community.  The process will be stricter than the existing GGF process fir recommendation documents, at the existing process doesn't require any implementation to exist before submitting a recommendation, and has fewer criteria for acceptance as a recommendation.
 
WS-I is primarily a reactive body.  GGF needs to show leadership: we should steer the development of Grid technology.  On occasion we will face the "chicken and egg" problem, in which people are reluctant to adopt a specification because it isn't part of a profile, but we can't make it part of a profile because it isn;t widely adopted.  The process by which a submission becomes a full recommendation seems to me an excellent way of resolving this issue.
 
Any profile document will exist in 'draft' form before it is submitted as a 'recommendation', just as any other specification.  As I understand the aim of the profile template document, it is precisely to specify that profiles must have links to implementation experience and adoption, and to define the rules for creating them; i.e. it specifically addresses the concerns that Ian raises.  I don't see a problem with 'draft' documents; everyone knows that documents go through a draft stage.  Unless Ian's reference to 'draft' profiles was referring to "Informational" profiles?
 
One concern of Ian's that isn't addressed by the profile template document is which bodies can produce profiles.  The intention, I believe, is that the OGSA profiles have to be produced by the OGSA WG.  I agree that we need some central body that controls the production of OGSA profiles.
 
Dave.
 
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Ian Foster [mailto:foster@mcs.anl.gov]
Sent: 21 December 2004 13:04
To: Dave Berry; d.snelling@fle.fujitsu.com
Cc: ogsa-wg
Subject: Re: [ogsa-wg] Profile documents

Dave's comment captures a major concern I have about how the profile notion seems to be evolving.

A profile, in the sense of the WS-I profiles that formed at least the starting point for our discussion, documents a way of using well-established and widely used specifications. I believe we have fairly broad consensus for that definition.

However, we are now introducing the idea of a "draft" profile that does not need to be grounded in adoption. In so doing, I fear that we abandon the discipline that will allow us to ensure that profiles represent authoritative statements on how to build Grid systems. GGFers will conclude that a profile is a way to respectability. We will start to see many proposals for profiles, many with no connection to implementation experience or adoption, and I don't see how we will be able to say yes to some and no to others, as we will have no clear rules for doing so. Working groups will start to produce their own profiles, as well. We will end up with a set of profiles that look as diffuse and ill defined as the current set of GGF working groups. Of course, some will be "draft" and some "recommended", but I think that distinction will be lost on the community.

DAIS for me represents an excellent test case for what a profile should be. It's a nice piece of work and has at least one academic implementation. However, it hasn't seen any adoption by database vendors. That to me means that it doesn't belong in a profile. This is not to say at all that DAIS is not valuable, or that the DAIS team should not be working to get DAIS adopted by vendors. It's simply saying that a profile isn't the way to do it.

Ian.


At 09:22 AM 12/21/2004 +0000, Dave Berry wrote:
I definitely want to allow the DAIS spec in the first data profile.
This is partly the chicken and egg question; if a spec isn't in an OGSA
profile, people will be less inclined to implement it.  This is
particularly applicable to the DAIS spec, because we want people to
implement it as part of their DBMS systems, not as a standalone
executable.  (This is to avoid unnecessary copying of data in the
implementations).

_______________________________________________________________
Ian Foster                    www.mcs.anl.gov/~foster
Math & Computer Science Div.  Dept of Computer Science
Argonne National Laboratory   The University of Chicago   
Argonne, IL 60439, U.S.A.     Chicago, IL 60637, U.S.A.
Tel: 630 252 4619             Fax: 630 252 1997
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