From rinehuls@access.digex.net Tue Jun 3 18:18:48 1997 Received: from access5.digex.net (rinehuls@access5.digex.net [205.197.245.196]) by dkuug.dk (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id SAA28401 for ; Tue, 3 Jun 1997 18:18:46 +0200 Received: from localhost (rinehuls@localhost) by access5.digex.net (8.8.4/8.8.4) with SMTP id MAA11639 for ; Tue, 3 Jun 1997 12:18:43 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 12:18:43 -0400 (EDT) From: "william c. rinehuls" To: sc22docs@dkuug.dk Subject: SC22 N2484 - WG22 Business Plan and Conveners Report for Plenary Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII _____________________beginning of title page ___________________ ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 Programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces Secretariat: U.S.A. (ANSI) ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 N2484 June 1997 TITLE: WG22 Business Plan and WG22 Convener's Report for the August 1997 JTC 1/SC22 Plenary SOURCE: Secretariat, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 WORK ITEM: N/A STATUS: Please note that consideration of this Report and Business Plan will be an agenda item for the August 1997 SC22 Plenary. CROSS REFERENCE: N/A DOCUMENT TYPE: Convener's Report ACTION To SC22 Member Bodies for review. Address reply to: ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 Secretariat William C. Rinehuls 8457 Rushing Creek Court Springfield, VA 22153 USA Tel: +1 (703) 912-9680 Fax: +1 (703) 912-2973 email: rinehuls@access.digex.net ______________end of title page; beginning of text ____________________ Business Plan and Convener's Report ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG9 (PCTE) Document ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG22 N162 PERIOD COVERED: June 1996 - May 1997 SUBMITTED BY: Convener of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG22 Regis Minot Transtar 14, rue de la Ferme 92100 Boulogne France Phone: +33 1 46 94 77 30 Fax: +33 1 46 94 77 99 EMail: Regis.Minot@transtar.fr 1. MANAGEMENT SUMMARY 1.1 JTC1/SC22/WG22 STATEMENT OF SCOPE Development and maintenance of ISO/IEC Standards related to PCTE. 1.2 PROJECT REPORT 1.2.1 COMPLETED PROJECTS None. 1.2.2 PROJECTS UNDERWAY JTC1.22.47.01 -- Maintenance of current PCTE standard All outstanding comments have been resolved. Two corrigenda have been written and after a few final editorial change, will be submitted for ballot by end of June. It is also the goal of WG22 to integrate into one single standard the result of the work of all subprojects. After approval of the corrigenda (subproject JTC1.22.47.01), the OO extensions (see below, subproject JTC1.22.47.02), the FG extensions (see below, subproject JTC1.22.47.03) and the IDL binding (see below, subproject JTC1.22.47.05), WG22 will propose a new edition of PCTE (edition 2) merging all these standards as follows: IS 13719-1, edition 2: PCTE Abstract Specifications IS 13719-2, edition 2: PCTE C binding IS 13719-3, edition 2: PCTE Ada binding IS 13719-4, edition 2: PCTE IDL binding WG22 has already started this integration work. As the only changes involved by this integration are editorial, WG22 simply intends to submit edition 2 directly to ITTF. JTC1.22.47.02 -- Object oriented extensions of PCTE Three PDAMS were submitted for ballot and have now passed successfully. They have been turned into DAMS and are now being submitted again for ballot: DAM to ISO/IEC 13719-1 OO PCTE extension - Abstract specification DAM to ISO/IEC 13719-2 OO PCTE extension - C binding DAM to ISO/IEC 13719-3 OO PCTE extension - Ada binding JTC1.22.47.03 -- Fine Grain extensions of PCTE Three PDAMS were submitted for ballot and have now passed successfully. They have been turned into DAMS and are now being submitted again for ballot: DAM to ISO/IEC 13719-1 FG PCTE extension - Abstract specification DAM to ISO/IEC 13719-2 FG PCTE extension - C binding DAM to ISO/IEC 13719-3 FG PCTE extension - Ada binding JTC1.22.47.05 -- IDL binding of PCTE An IDL binding of PCTE (ECMA 230) was submitted to ISO on 1 July 1996, by ECMA, under the terms of the ISO/IEC JTC1 fast-track procedure. The actual ballot was delayed after a decision of SC22 requesting the checking of the proposed standard against the changes proposed in the IDL CD 14750 standard. The checking was done and confirmation was given that these changes have no impact on the IDL binding of PCTE. The fast-track ballot should be therefore underway. WG22 has already agreed to limit its work to a review of the proposed ECMA standard and has decided not to undertake any competitive/concurrent work. 1.2.3 CANCELLED PROJECTS (PROPOSAL SUBMITTED TO SC22) No progress has been made in 1996 and 1997 on this subproject, as the resources of the working group were mainly focused on the other subprojects and there has been no volunteer to work on this subproject. Consequently, at the last WG22 meeting in Camberley, WG22 decided to propose the withdrawal of this subproject at the next SC22 plenary in August 1997. 1.2.4 COOPERATION AND COMPETITION The most active liaisons maintained by WG22 have been with ECMA/TC33 and ISO/IEC SC7/WG11. With ECMA/TC33, the synergy is obvious because most of WG22 members are also ECMA/TC33 members. The liaison of WG22 in SC7/WG11 is also project editor of the subproject dealing with the definition of rules to derive PCTE Schema Definition Sets from the standard models adopted by WG11 (basically CDIF models). 2.0 PERIOD REVIEW 2.1 MARKET REQUIREMENTS The PCTE market is a subset of the Repository market. Today, PCTE addresses well the problem of providing a standard framework upon which complete repository products can be built. Like in many other domains of software industry, the approval of a standard at ISO level is not sufficient to make it universally adopted. A major condition for its acceptance in the industry is the wide availability of implementations compliant with this standard. Today this criteria is only partly met: there are available implementations but today, they have not yet managed to be the leading technology on this market. In fact, there is still no leading technology as large software vendors seem to still believe in proprietary solutions in this domain and compete again each other without adhering to standards. For the users who have chosen to adopt the PCTE standard, the situation is relatively satisfying as there are now two commercially available implementations of PCTE: 1. the first one, which is the most widely used, was implementing by GIE Emeraude and is commercialised by Transtar 2. the second one was developed by EDS The repository market is relatively small. There is the same ratio between the market of databases in general and the market of repositories, than between the market of end user applications and the market of software development tools. The relatively small size of this market makes the adoption of PCTE technology growing slowly. Nevertheless, despite this aspect, the need for repositories is now fully recognised. It was hard to convince software development organisations five years ago, but most of them are now convinced that they need a repository. PCTE based repository products are currently used at more than 100 different sites in Europe, America and Asia (principally Japan) through products like Transtar Repository, Portos, SMG Dbench, Entreprise II and HoodNice. 2.2 ACHIEVEMENTS All extensions and corrections to PCTE have been presented in section 1. They are expected to result into a new extended edition of PCTE IS 13719, by end of 1997 at the latest. 2.3 RESOURCES The resources have, not surprisingly, decreased over this third year dedicated to the maintenance of PCTE. All technical work has been done and the remaining activities are mainly editorial. A review of the remaining editorial work was done with the project editor John Dawes. There is no serious difficulty in achieving the current projects as planned (except for C++ which should be withdrawn, according to WG22 request). 3.0 FOCUS NEXT WORK PERIOD With the achievement of PCTE edition 2, WG22 considers that its main objectives have been met. The development of PCTE based software relies now on the ability of software vendors to provide compliant implementations and to develop appropriate solutions on top of PCTE interfaces, to meet user requirements. An European project has developed a test suite of the PCTE APIs which can be very useful in helping those vendors to validate the compliance of their PCTE implementation. PCTE is now stable and has the features that were requested by its users (object orientation in particular). There is currently no further industry pressure for PCTE evolutions. The work on standard schemas which is under achievement in SC7/WG11 should also bring a final solution to the interoperability between PCTE and IRDS data model representations. The ECMA/TC33 committee has decided to stop its activities by end of 1997, considering that its goals have been reached. Therefore, as soon as PCTE edition 2 will be published, WG22 will propose to stop further activities. WG22 thinks that a possibility could be to dissolve WG22 by end of 1997 and nominate a project editor that would ensure liaison with SC22 in case of maintenance problems dealing with PCTE. If this proposal is accepted by SC22, the nomination of new officers for WG22 should therefore be restricted to a project editor. John Dawes, the current project editor of all WG22 projects is ready to accept this role if no other volunteer indicates his/her desire to take it. 3.1 DELIVERABLES It is anticipated that ITTF will accept the editorial proposed by WG22 which should lead by end 1997 to a PCTE second edition. Its publication by ITTF should therefore be possible by early 1998. 3.2 STRATEGIES It is expected that routine handling will suffice to complete the progress of work described above. 3.2.1 RISKS Unexpectedly heavy technical comment could delay any of the strategies described above. However, no problems are anticipated. 3.2.2 OPPORTUNITIES None. 3.3 WORK PROGRAM PRIORITIES No more relevant as most of the work is achieved. 4 OTHER ITEMS 4.1 ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT DISTRIBUTION WG22 has been working with email extensively since its creation. This works quite well. The secretariat of WG22 which is ensured by Chris Brockway, from ECMA, has also made a more and more intensive usage of electronic distribution, owing to an efficient email infrastructure put in place by ECMA. 4.2 WEB SITE A web site dedicated to WG22 and PCTE is also maintained by Keld Simonsen at the following address: http://www.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC22/WG 4.3 RECENT MEETING The 6th meeting of WG22 took place at Camberley, United Kingdom on May 13-14 1997. 4.4 FUTURE MEETINGS The next (and probably the final) meeting of WG22 will take place in London on October 14, 1997. ___________________end of SC22 N2484 _______________________________