We brought that perspective up in earlier discussions with the GFSG as well. In fact, we have been told by IBM representatives the very same thing: no active participation because its not a WG. Andre. Quoting [Shantenu Jha] (Jan 25 2006):

Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 17:35:10 +0000 (GMT) From: Shantenu Jha To: saga-rg@ggf.org Cc: rosab@ac.upc.edu Subject: [saga-rg] BOUNCE saga-rg@ggf.org: Non-member submission from ["Rosa M. Badia" ] (fwd)

Bounced message from Rosa below. Interesting perspective.

Shantenu

PS: My own $0.02 coming soon....

Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 18:23:11 +0100 From: "Rosa M. Badia" To: Craig Lee Cc: Simple API for Grid Applications WG Subject: Re: [saga-rg] Fwd (s.newhouse@omii.ac.uk): Re: SAGA - WG?

Last November I acted as reviewer in a project, and they stated that they have not taken into account SAGA because it is a RG and there was very few (or no?) industry involved. They also claimed that as RG the results were coming to slowly.

Becoming a WG can of course attract users from projects and industry, I do not know if it will attract more effort at the implementation level too.

Just to give a use-case :-)

Best regards,

Rosa

Craig Lee wrote:

...

All,

First of all, allow me to say that this is a good problem to have. The fact that the GFSG is considering whether SAGA should be one WG or an umbrella RG for multiple WGs means that people view it as important.

My personal opinion is that the SAGA-RG could continue as this umbrella organization, but to follow through with the original SAGA intent, an initial WG should be formed that is focused on _S_AGA. To emphasize the _simple_ in SAGA I keep coming back to the analogy of "the six calls in MPI". Whether the current SAGA API is simple enough is separate discussion. In any case, the API should be (a) minimally complete, (b) easy for implementers to implement and (c) easy for new grid users to use.

As long as the umbrella SAGA-RG persists, it can consider issues of enhancing the API in various functional areas, e.g., data movement, and also establishing a common look-and-feel across them all. WGs could be spun-off as necessary.

Just my 2 cents.

--Craig

At 10:13 AM 1/24/2006, Andre Merzky wrote:

...

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 | | +-----------------------------------------------------------------+