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(525662) S|ndag, 25 nov 90 18:11 Jacob Palme QZ
F|r k{nnedom: Robert A. Flavin <RIBO%YKTVMH.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU> -- S{nt:  Ti
   sdag, 27 nov 90 16:53
Ind. mottagare: Bj|rn Carlsson QZ
Ind. mottagare: MHS news distribution list <MHSNEWS@VAX.runit.unit.uninett>
Kommentar till l{sarna av: 525660 av Jacob Palme QZ
[rende:  Notes from the ISO/IEC/CCITT X.400 development group
------------------------------------------------------------
Here is the complete text of the minutes which I wrote during the
discussions in the computer conferencing/group communication
subgroup at the ISO/IEC/CCITT meeting.

SOURCE:  Joint ISO-IEC-CCITT Group Communication subgroup at the
co-located meeting of CCITT Study Group VII/Q.18 and ISO/IEC JTC
1/SC 18/WG 4 SPG on Messaging, Geneva, November 1990  (Jacob Palme,
notetaker)

TITLE: Notes from the Group Communication Subgroup

STATUS: These notes mainly present the discussions within the
subgroup, not the final decisions made by the group. The final
decisions made by the group are recorded in a separate status
report from the subgroup.

Wednesday, November 14, 1990
============================

List of participants

Steve Benford, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom
NG72RD (Chairman of the group)
Michael Durkin, Bell Atlantic, One Parkway, 9B, Philadelphia, Pa
19102, U S A.
Ank Hoang-van, France Telecom Cnet, 38/40 General Leclerc 92131
Issy Les Moulineaux, France
Michael Kuna, Herrenhausstrasse 10, D-1197 Berlin, Germany
Hiromiki Moriyama, NTT-PC Com, 3-23-11 Nisahi-shinbashi, Minato-ku,
Tokyo 105, Japan
Jacob Palme, Skeppargatan 73, S-115 30 Stockholm, Sweden
Jean Walravens, Alcatel Bell Telephone, Francis Wellesplein 1, B-
2018 Antwerpen, Belgium
Ulrich Zysset, Swiss Ptt/KS 3, Viktoriastrasse 21, 3030 Berne,
Switzerland

List of contributions

TD 4019: Meeting report from the GC subgroup in the previous
VII/Q.18 meeting in Munich.
TD 4020: Draft recommendation F.gc, version 3 (output of the Munich
meeting)
TD 4021: Draft recommendation X.gc, version 3 (output of the Munich
meeting)
TD 4022: GC issues and requirements, version 3 (output of the
Munich meeting)
TD 4097 Asynchronous Group Communication, liaison letter from SG I.
This letter has two appendices:
1.      Draft recommendation F.agc, version 4
2.      Functional specification for a typical computerized
conferencing application
D-210: Draft recommendation X.gc, version 4 (from Sweden)
D-211: Draft recommendation F.gc, version 4 (from Sweden)
D-269: Comments on the standardization of Group Communication (from
NTT, Japan)
D-300: Group Communication Information Model and Abstract Service
(from UK)
D-308: Direction for Group Communication (from UK)
MH-300: Different Group Communication Implementations (from Jacob
Palme, Sweden)
MH-301: Contribution on Draft Recommendation F.gc/X.gc (from
Michael Kuna, Germany)
GC-1: Why Attribute Carriers (from Jacob Palme, Sweden)

Planning of work during this meeting

1.      Identify output and timetable for this study period
        (Input paper D-308)
2.      Relation to other work (Input paper 4097)
3a.     Technical issues, information model (Input papers
        D-210, D-211, D-300, GC-1)
3b.     Technical issues, architecture (Input papers D-269,
        MH-300, MH-301)
4.      Issues reflecting on the MTS (restriction on distribution)
5.      Identify what we need for the next meeting

Resolution of different requirements on the GC work

We noted that there are two different and possibly conflicting
views on the output wanted from the group communication work:

a.      That we produce a general-purpose group communication model
and framework, which can form as the basis for different group
communication applications. This general model and framework should
not be restricted to modelling group communication as part of MHS.

b.      That we produce, if possible within the present study
period, a recommendation/ standard for the interconnection of
computer conferencing system, which has a close relation to MHS.
We made a tentative decision to resolve this problem by planning to
produce three documents before the end of the present study period:

Part A: Service specifications and user functionality
(corresponding to the F.gc document)

Part B: A general framework document. This part can contain:
>       A general information model
>       A general architecture model
>       A general management model
>       A general description of user operations

Part C: Computer conferencing. This part can contain:
>       How to apply the models in document A on computer
conferencing
>       User operations in computer conferencing
>       The specific model, architecture and protocol for
        computer conferencing

Planning of future work during the present study period

Our goals (as seen at this stage of the subgroup meeting) would
then be to produce, during the present study period, Part B to CD
and CCITT draft recommendation status, Part A and C to CD and CCITT
recommendation status. The reason why part B would not go to DIS
status is that we expect that the 1992 CCITT recommendation will be
restricted in scope and functionality, and that ISO will want to
extend the scope and functionality together with CCITT in the next
study period. (See the status report for the final goals agreed at
the end of the subgroup meeting.)

Discussion of other work

We noted that work on synchronous group communication is presently
being done in SG I. We accepted that our results in part C
(computer conferencing) will be mainly aimed at asynchronous group
communication. We decided to write a liaison letter to SG I
presenting the above plans and asking for their approval. We also
decided to ask SG I for liaison from the present work on
synchronous group communication.

First pass at discussion of information model

We discussed the information model, mainly as presented in the
input papers D-210, D-211, D-300 and GC-1, noting the similarities
and differences in view on the information model.

Thursday, November 15
=====================

Future plans

Carl-Uno Manros visited us and said that there is no requirement
that we must be ready with a standard within the present CCITT
study period, but that he does require us to decide, before the end
of this meeting, whether we plan to have something ready for
approval as a CCITT recommendation within the present study period.
We decided to postpone a decision on this until Knut Smaaland can
join our group next week.

Restricted domain

We decided to write a letter to the Q.18 plenary, asking the
plenary to transfer responsibility for the function "restricted
domain" from us to the general enhancements subgroup. Jacob Palme
will draft a letter.

What kind of standards should we produce

We had a long discussion on what kind of standards we are to
produce. One alternative would be to produce the standards document
in three pieces:

A.      A general definition of a group communication information
model, general architectural model and abstract service
specification.

B.      A definition of computer conferencing, its abstract service
specification and how it can be realized using the general model
produced under A. above.

C.      A realization of the general model produced under A., as it
can be used for computer conferencing, using partly existing
services like MTS, DS and DFR.

Another alternative would be to only produce the document B and C
as listed above, with direct specification of how B can be realized
using C.

A third alternative would be to specify A, B and C, but to define
the mappings not only from B to A and from A to C, but also between
A and C.

We made the tentative decision to try to develop this, but to be
prepared to skip the A. model if it is found to difficult or
unsuitable.

Plans for work during the present meeting

We decided to plan our work during the present meeting as follows:

Thursday afternoon: Computer conferencing model.

Friday morning: General GC model and mapping of the computer
conferencing model on it.

Monday: Summary of work during the previous week and work on the
realization using (wholly or partly) MTS, DS and DFR.

Tuesday: Concluding work, editing.

Computer conferencing model

Operations:

Role: Member

Subscription-request/Unsubscription-request (on an activity, a
conversation or a conversational branch).
Find-activities
Find-subscribed-activites
Find-contributions (includes finding contributions which are
unread, which are replies, directly or indirectly, to another
contribution etc.)
Fetch-contribution (in order to read it, print it, file it, filter
it etc.)
Re-submit a contribution (not necessarily self-written, to another
activity)
Add/remove keyword from a contribution
Find-members of an activity
Lookup information on another participant
Submit contribution
Reply to all recipients of a previous contribution
Reply to only the author of a previous contribution
Write a contribution obsoleting a previous contribution
Delete a contribution

Moderator operations

Pre-moderation:
Find-submission
Fetch-submission
Accept/reject submission (whether or how to notify the submitter is
FFS)
Re-route submission (to another activty)
Post-moderation:
Remove or reroute contribution (may include automatic removal or
rerouting of the conversational branch started by the contribution)
(Note that removal does not mean physical removal of the
contribution text itself, since the contribution may still be
available e.g. in other activities or to its author)

Owner/General manager operations

Set access controls.
Decide which entities or roles are allowed to copy, reroute or
remove contributions from an activity.
Create activity and sub-activity.
Delete activity (This may not imply physical removal of the
contributions in the activity, since they may be available as
contributions in other activities and to their writers).
Modify-activity (Some, but not all, attributes which can be
modified are expiration time, access controls, description, name,
aliases, keywords, rules, encryption policy, suspension status).
Add/remove members from activities.
Add/remove owners from activities.
Register and deregister users.

Notification handling

At least he following notifications may be needed:
Notification of acceptance and rejection of submissions to pre-
moderated activities.
Notification that you have become a member of an activity.
Delivery notifications to the conference and to its members.
Receipt notification.

Issues for further study in the above operations list:

Notifications and their use
Naming scheme
Handling of anonymous or pseudonymous contributions
How to announce new activities to potential members
Filtering
Setting keywords on activities

Friday, November 16
===================

On Friday we discussed the general group communication model. Steve
Benford presented his model. The general opinion was that we should
develop such a model, but that such development was a long term
task, and that we would in parallel develop a computer conferencing
abstract service definition and implementation based on MHS.

We also decided to produce liaison letters to SG I (regarding
future work on the F document) and to Q.20/ISO SC21/WG 4 on use of
the directory for group communication. (Later in the meeting we
decided not to produce any liaison to the Directory Group yet,
since our work on how to use the DS is not complete enough to
present to them.)

Monday, November 19
===================

On Monday, we discussed the Computer Conferencing Information
Model, Abstract Service definition and Architecture. The results of
this discussion can be found in our working paper, X.gc version 5,
part 3. Important issues during the discussions on Monday were to
what extent Computer Conferencing is to rely on the existence of a
globally interconnected Directory System and which underlying
services are best used for communication between GCSA-s.
We then decided to produce the following output documents from this
meeting:

Document                        Who will prepare a draft
--------                        ------------------------

X.gc version 5                  Jacob Palme with input from
                                Steve Benford

GC subgroup notes               Jacob Palme

Liaison letter to SG I  Jacob Palme

Restricted Domain proposal      Jacob Palme

Timetable and status report     Steve Benford

We then made the following table of documents which we would like
to see for the next Q.18 meeting:

Document                        Who is willing to work on this
--------                        ------------------------------

Abstract service for
computer conferencing           Jacob Palme, Steve Benford and
including ASN.1 encoding        Michael Kuna

Distributed architecture        Jacob Palme and Michael Kuna
for GC

General GC Information Model    Steve Benford, Michael Durkin and
Jacob Palme

Computer Conferencing           Steve Benford, Michael Durkin
Information Model               and Jacob Palme

We decided to radically change the text in X.gc version 4 to show
how computer conferencing operations and architecture can be
derived in a top-down fashion from the computer conferencing
abstract service definition. Since we did not have time to finalize
this work during the present meeting, we will not copy the old text
of X.gc into the output working document, even though parts of the
ideas in this document will have to be handled in the final X.gc
document.

Tuesday, November 20
====================

Tuesday morning was spent on the general information model. We
especially discussed whether links are objects themselves or only
relations between objects.

On Tuesday afternoon, we went through a paper with functional
requirements on group communication coming from the the EIES
development group in New Jersey. We checked their requirements
against our requirements, and added proposals for new requirements
where needed.

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