Subject: SC22 N2484 - WG22 Business Plan and Conveners Report for Plenary

From: "william c. rinehuls" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 12:18:43 -0400 (EDT)

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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:  [email-masked]

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      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: [email-masked]

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.

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