GWS-WG plans and actions

[Guy Rixon]

Hi,

Peter Quinn is asking for updated plans of this WG to go before the IVOA exec
next week. In particular, we need to explain how our work fits with the
demonstrations of January 2005 and with Peter's July-15th cut-off for input.
Appended below are my ideas of how it will go.  Please get back to me soonest
if you think this is wrong.  Objecttions received by tomorrow midnight will go
in my report to the exec; later ideas before Wednesday 23rd June can be fed in
verbally at the exec meeting.

Cheers,
Guy

VO Support Interfaces: concrete spec hoped for before 15th July 2004. Spec
should become a formal working draft by that date and should become a
recommendation before the Pune meeting. This standard is likely to be stable
well before January and would be fine for the demos.

Async activities: some work needed.

 - Clear up points of detail raised in Boston (Rixon, by end June 2004).

 - Draft alternative proposal using WS-CAF for comparision (Rixon,
   by end of June 2004).

 - Debate relative merits of WS-CAF and WS-RF following Matthew's comments
   (whole WG via mailing list; decision required by end of August 2004).

 - Revise the proposal to use the selected technology

 - Prototype to prove ideas in 4Q2004.

Given that we haven't got working consensus about which plumbing to use
(consensus at Boston that WS-RF would work is not the same as consensus that
we prefer it to WS-CAF), this proposal won't be stable by July 15th.  This is
probably not one to showcase in January.


Single-sign-on proposal: some more work needed. If we accept the proposal as
presented at Boston, then it can go forward quickly.  However, Reagan raised
the problem of iteroperating with Shibboleth and that throws some doubt on the
whole thing. Shibboleth is based on SAML; our proposal doesn't use SAML, but
it could be changed to do so; might be better that way.  If we value
interoperating with Shib, then we should probably adapt our standard to suit.
Therefore, I (at least) need time to research SAML and Shib. I doubt that this
proposal will be stable by July 15th.  If we need security in the January
demos, then we may need to do something ad hoc, in which case the current
version of the proposal would be OK.

Immediate actions:

 - Break existing SSO proposal into three docs: wire-protocol spec, PKI spec
   and non-normative introduction (Rixon, by 7th July 2004).

WS-I profile conformance: we accept that it's the right long-term goal, yes?
Therefore, we need to ppublish a short doc stating this formally. Andre: can
you draft something to go out before 15th July, please?  Longer term, we need
the collated conformance tests for the WS tool-kits. Can we have that for
Pune?  Iff we turn out to have some conforming toolkits (at least two of
them), then the WS-I facet of the January demos is to show that services from
these environments talk to each other without grief.

VOSpace: no formal proposals yet, so I'm assuming that there won't be any
document drafts by 15th July.  Therefore, under Peter's rules, we don't expect
the VOSpace standard to appear in the January demos. However, I strongly
suspect that the demos will need some VOSpace facilities (e.g. we may be using
AstroGrid CEA services), so we'll need at least an ad-hoc VOSpace. Therefore,
I suggest that we try to make the demo solution look like the long-term
solution of choice even if the standard isn't ratified by January.

 - Initial, written VOSpace proposal by end of July 2004, please?

 - Discussion on mailing list plus informal, private prototypes
   (Morris and O'Mullane leading) by end of August?

 - Discussion of finding at Pune

 - Proposed recommendation by Christmas if consensus at Pune.

Guy Rixon 				        gtr at ast.cam.ac.uk
Institute of Astronomy   	                Tel: +44-1223-337542
Madingley Road, Cambridge, UK, CB3 0HA		Fax: +44-1223-337523