[saga-rg] Re: Fwd (s.newhouse@omii.ac.uk): Re: SAGA - WG?

Just short for now, more later... Quoting [Dieter Kranzlmueller] (Feb 03 2006):

Plain and simple: Answer 1 is wrong. There was no decision to block you, if you read Steven's email carefully. All that has been agreed by GFSG is to point out the importance of this issue and the possible benefits of rethinking your strategy. However, and this is clearly stated in Steven's email, it is up to you whether you want to use the path that GFSG thinks is beneficial, or if you continue to go the way that you want to go.

Yeah, maybe I am somewhat overly sensitive, and no neccessarily sensible... :-)

So let me go to answer 2: Yes, GFSG thinks you are doing a great job (at least, one person does so), and I think, this is the reason that GFSG believes you could do even more for the benefit of the community. From this answer I also see that you see practical problems of getting to a higher goal. This alone is a good result of your discussions and we (all together) should think about how to solve the problem of activating people.

Apart from that, I believe your proposal in the last paragraph of version 2 would be an acceptable answer as reply to the GFSG message. The only problem, which is a bit missing is, whether the proposed way of going ahead as you planned, is agreed by the SAGA-RG or if this is only Andre's opinion.

My mail right now only presents my opinion. There have been other mails on the list, from Craig, Tom and Shantenu, which are in my opinion pointing in a similar direction as my second one. However, I hope our phone call today will leave the group with a common shared strategy for GGF16.

It would be good to hear, whether all (or the majority of people) in SAGA-RG think, that the bit-flipping should proceed as planned, neglecting the possible benefits as expressed in Steven's email.

That's my view of the situation. If it is not clear, or if you need more input, let me know. It might, however, be beneficial to do a conference call, if more problems come up.

Yep,tom schedules a calal for today, you and steven are of course warmely invited to join in :-) ---------------------------- Hi, here are the details for this week's call Date: Fri 3 February 2006 Time: 1500 Central European Time 1400 Greenwich Mean Time 0800 Central Time 0600 Pacific Time Number: 0844 888 8888 (UK) 01805 004 102 (Germany) +44 870 088 5706 (Others) Code: 808044 Proposed Agenda: - Agenda Bashing - Discussion of meeting with BES and Byte-IO and matters arising - Status of charter and bitflipping, wg/rg - Miscellaneous - Issue list Cheers, Tom ----------------------------

Regards, Dieter

BTW, I see you already did the bit flip, at least in the To: address. ;-)

----- Original Message ----- From: "Andre Merzky" To: "Simple API for Grid Applications WG" Cc: "Dieter Kranzlmueller" ; "Steven Newhouse" ; "Shantenu Jha" ; "Tom Goodale" Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 11:37 AM Subject: Re: Fwd (s.newhouse@omii.ac.uk): Re: SAGA - WG?

...

Well, I can't make up my own mind on how to react on the GFSG discussion. Well, please allow me to post two reponses :-)

----------------------------------------------------------- Version one:

Well, I am quite furious to be honest. Why the heck did we sit down in Boston to discuss the SAGA scope with both GFSG members and OGSA/WSRF folx? We came to a conclusion there: SAGA scope is ok for now, they SHOULD be WG, go ahead. The issue was _settled_. Once more, since the issue has been settled about five times by now, since the formation of the group at GGF10 (just a reminder: ~50 votes for WG, 2 votes for RG).

So, here we are, 3 years later, and are STILL discussing the same issue over and over again, and all promises that the issue is closed are forgotten again. What a waste of time... :-(

The goal of the members of the SAGA group is AFAICS to define and standardize a well scoped, very simple, and highly needed API. Just that.

If there is a perceived need of the GFSG that GGF needs a public API facade, or of the OGSA folx that there is a need for a simple API on top of OGSA, then they probably should form a RG and define that!

I think its not the task of the GFSG to say: "you do good work, but please do something different." GGF does not work on requests, but is community driven. If other people would be interested in widening the scope of the SAGA-RG, they would show up in the meetings, submit use cases, author documents. Be active (hello OGSA?).

Those people who DO show up in our meetings (RPC, CPR, DRMAA, ByteIO, BES etc.) are satisfied with our scope (mostly we say: nice for you to come, but we have limited scope right now, your part comes later).

There are more than a few people scared away by the fact that SAGA is a research group, and still after three years, did not manage to become a WG, as was the plan in the first place!

Well, I think you got the point: in my opinion the decision to block the long priomsed flip into a WG is against the agreement we had with the GFSG, and not acceptable.

------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------ Version two:

Thinking positively, that is really good news. Well, what GFSG really says is: "Guys, you do a great job, we need more of this". Having the SAGA group scope broadening as an umbrella for community driven Grid APIs seems like a very good thing to do.

Several practical points come to my mind, though:

- we certainly don't want to delay the release of the current SAGA documents, in particular of the API spec, as the SAGA API is sorely needed NOW.

- The current API draft covers both functional (scope) and non functional (look and feel etc) aspwcts of the SAGA API. That defeats the approach proposed by the GFSG. However, I think that splitting the document NOW is not the way to solve this (we decided against that at last GGF).

Instead I would propose to continue our current work, with the declared goal to have the SAGA-API v.1 finalized ASAP, and then go ahead and start with a look-and-feel document afresh, based on our experience with the API. Alterantively, and given enough interest (see point below), both pathes can be performed in parallel.

- well, in order to do what the GFSG proposes we need more active people. And active meaning really active. It seems not enough to chat with other groups now and then: we need active participation of their group members in the SAGA document and API work.

It is not obvious to me how to achieve that, and if that need for active participation is perceived outside our group and the GFSG.

So I think the buttom line is: the way proposed by the GFSG offers a number of opportunities.

However, if we want to keep the deadlines attached to our current work, we would need to spawn a dedicated WG for these docs immediately (i.e. as of GGF16!) (possibly: iSAGA-WG - initial SAGA ;-P) That would basically move the current group to iSAGA-WG, with the scope defined by the current API spec.

------------------------------------------------------------

Hmm, the second version is probably the better one. Anyway, I am _really_ angry that promises by the GFSG are not kept.

Cheers, Andre.

Quoting [Andre Merzky] (Jan 24 2006):

...

Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 19:13:23 +0100 From: Andre Merzky To: Simple API for Grid Applications WG Subject: Fwd (s.newhouse@omii.ac.uk): Re: SAGA - WG?

Dear group,

as you know, we are currently in transition from a GGF Research Group to a GGF Working Group, which will enable us to submit documents into the standardization track. The last action from our side was to submit the proposed WG charter to our Area Directors (Steven and Dieter), and wait for the last step in the process, the GFSG approval of that charter.

Below you find the answer we got from the GFSG. I know people will have strong opinions about that, both positive and negative (well, certainly I do anyway :-P ), so we would like to discuss the GFSG answer on this list. It would be favourable to come to a group internal conclusion, and a solid opinion, about the groups future before GGF16 - that means within the next two weeks.

Best regards,

your friendly group chairs ;-)

----- Forwarded message from Steven Newhouse -----

...

Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 07:38:45 +0000 From: Steven Newhouse To: Andre Merzky , Shantenu Jha , Tom Goodale CC: Dieter Kranzlmueller Subject: Re: SAGA - WG?

Dear Andre, Shantenu & Tom,

At the GFSG meeting last week, there was a general discussion as to how GFSG should/could steer the standards areas to increase the impact of GGF. One of the discussions related to the Applications area and how we (as Area Directors) could help to structure the activity to align work with activities in the Architecture (i.e. OGSA) area.

There was considerable interest from the rest of the GFSG in the SAGA activities and the potential uptake that the generation of stable client-side interfaces (and potentially command line tools that build on these interfaces) could provide. The GFSG saw SAGA-RG as an important step forward for grids being adopted by the wider community.

That's the good news!

We mentioned the pending SAGA-WG charter and that this was the next step to move things forward. Some concern was expressed about focus and broad scope. Especially as other domains would like to bring forward their own domains (data access, data movement, etc) for client side API standardisation.

One proposed solution to this is that SAGA-RG stays as it is. It is doing very valuable work collecting use cases, developing the strawman API that supports these use cases and discussing implementation issues through real experience. However, clearly there are elements within the strawman that are ready to move to the next level.

It is proposed that these aspects should be developed as standalone WG's starting with a common look and feel, and then picking up on (say) jobs & file movement to drive some domain specific applications of the common look and feel. The result would be an umbrella-RG (SAGA) with a set of coupled WGs for the different aspects.

So there are two ways forward - you have _our_ support which ever way _you_ choose to go forward.

If you go forward with then the current charter then you will need to be explicit as to which areas you will be doing (to allow space for other WG's to come forward), i.e. you need to define your API scope. Elements of the API will change at different rates and putting this all into one specification adds to its complexity. Small tightly focussed specifications have had much greater success within GGF. This may be something else to consider.

As a conclusion we hope that you will think about this great opportunity to take the responsibility for the bigger picture, and that you will adapt your plans accordingly from this feedback. We would certainly be available to support you in this quest. At the same time, it has also been agreed to continue the regular bit-flipping procedure with your charter, should you insist on your currently proposed approach.

Steven & Dieter -- +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ | Andre Merzky | phon: +31 - 20 - 598 - 7759 | | Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) | fax : +31 - 20 - 598 - 7653 | | Dept. of Computer Science | mail: merzky@cs.vu.nl | | De Boelelaan 1083a | www: http://www.merzky.net | | 1081 HV Amsterdam, Netherlands | | +-----------------------------------------------------------------+

-- +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ | Andre Merzky | phon: +31 - 20 - 598 - 7759 | | Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) | fax : +31 - 20 - 598 - 7653 | | Dept. of Computer Science | mail: merzky@cs.vu.nl | | De Boelelaan 1083a | www: http://www.merzky.net | | 1081 HV Amsterdam, Netherlands | | +-----------------------------------------------------------------+