Held at
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR, 55K jpeg)
January 19-22, 1999, Boulder, Colorado
Evening Out at "The Fort"
IEEE Sponsor, Merritt Jones
SSSWG Chair, Jack Cole
MMS Technical Editor, Geoff Peck
MSSRM Editor, Sam Coleman
1244.1 Architecture/Data Model (Geoff Peck, Curtis Anderson, Joel Williams editors)
1244.2 Session Security, Authentication, and Initialization Protocol (Jan Klier, editor)
1244.3 Media Management Protocol (Murali Sathyanarayana, editor)
1244.4 Drive Management Protocol (Joel Williams, editor)
1244.5 Library Management Protocol (Joel Williams, editor)
ATTENDANCE (15). Curtis Anderson SGI curtis@sgi.com Jack Cole ARL jack.cole@ieee.org Troy Eberlein LEGATO teberlein@legato.com Bruce Haddon SUN bkh@spot.colorado.edu Carl Hagerstrom SEAGATESOFTWARE carlh@avail.com Tony Houdeshell EMASS tonyh@emass.com Dixon Hutchinson EXABYTE hutch@exabyte.com Jan Klier HP jan_klier@hp.com Stuart Kreitman LEGATO skreitman@legato.com Paul Lockwood LEGATO plock@legato.com John Merrill NCAR jhm@ucar.edu Geoff Peck QUANTUM (Cons.) geoff@peck.com Murali Sathyanarayana SGI murali@engr.sgi.com Joel Williams SES joelw@ses-inc.com Bob Wu COMMVAULT rwu@commvault.com
THANKS. John Merrill/NCAR arranged for the use of NCAR's meeting rooms, LCD projector; arranged catering for the meeting; and provided NCAR services for copying, telephone, and network access. The NCAR support is greatly appreciated, and permits SSSWG to afford meetings at commercially-provided sites during the rest of the year. The support John brought to the meeting was tremendous. John worked overnight at NCAR in addition to hosting and attending this meeting during the day. Dixon Hutchinson/Exabyte arranged a block of hotel rooms for the meeting, transportation to the evening out event, and the event itself. Thanks, Dixon.
ADMINISTRATIVE. The meeting began at 8:30am on Monday with attendance and registration. No changes to the November meeting minutes from Key West proposed, so the minutes were accepted as written. The proposed agenda was discussed and modified by an evolutionary process throughout the meeting. The meeting ended at noon Friday.
BALLOTING. Those present were reminded of the need to be IEEE Standards Association (SA) members to be eligible to serve as balloters. SA membership is $10/year if based on one flavor or another of IEEE membership (regular, affiliate, etc).
DISCUSSION. Geoff presented a new version of the architecture document, and a review of it was begun. Obvious gaps remain to be filled, including brief overviews of the other MMS components, for example. At a breakpoint in this review, copies of the draft were collected so that reviewers' comments could be incorporated overnight in a new version. Further review of this document was suspended at this point in order to prioritize other reviews for the week: of new versions of LMP and DMP provided by Joel; of work Murali accomplished since the holidays on MMP; of Joel's work on Objects for the Data Model; and of the "parking lot" items first listed in July.
After this prioritization, several brief discussions were held.
At the request of the chair, Bruce provided a few comments on the current state of CIM and DMTF, a topic he raised in November.
Jan brought attention to one new commercial alliance, and the group spent a few minutes on this and similar developments.
While looking at the program for the Sixteenth IEEE Mass Storage Systems Symposium, a plan was made for meeting days and times which would comfortably overlap the Symposium. A decision was reached to arrange a birds-of-a-feather meeting during the Symposium.
Topics of other brief discussions:
Over dinner Tuesday evening the process of accomplishing an intermediate review of the drafts by outsiders was considered. Drafts could go to reviewers February 14th. Each reviewer should get a complete set of drafts since it is misleading to look at one draft out of context. After receiving or downloading a copy of the set of drafts, reviewers should declare in the first two days what portion of the set they would examine so that full coverage of the set could be assured. Reviewers would be given a two-week window for completing reviews. No one reviewer could review the entire set in that time. Reviewers would be encouraged to submit comments on sections as they proceed, instead of waiting for the end of the window to give comments for entire drafts. It is anticipated that most of March and all of April would be consumed in balloting. May 7th is the next quarterly IEEE deadline for receipt of balloted standards.
Wednesday morning the meeting moved to new room, and most members accepted John's offer of an NCAR tour. Geoff distributed a printed copy of the architecture version 1.6a resulting from overnight edits. Review of the older architecture document v1.6 resumed at section 6.4. In the time remaining before lunch, internationalization and sorting order were considered. That topic was tabled, held for offline resolution by Curtis, Bruce, and Geoff.
After lunch architecture was again reviewed. And again the issue of addressing blind robots in the standards was raised. This issue was tabled for a later proposal by Geoff. At 5pm the meeting adjourned for the traditional evening out.
Thursday morning a quick status check of the 'parking lot' items and a few new items was accomplished:
LMP was reviewed for the remainder of the morning, and review of the current MMP was held in the afternoon. An evening attempt to continue review of MMP was abandoned because of deteriorating driving conditions due to snow.
Friday morning outlines of the remaining meeting schedule and technical issues were:
REVIEWERS INVITED. Reviewers are encouraged to contact Jack or Geoff for access to the draft standards. Attendance at meetings is not required to review drafts.
Next Meeting. March 15-19, 1999 in San Diego, California in conjunction with the Sixteenth IEEE Mass Storage Systems Symposium.
Future Meetings. A regular meeting will be held in May 1999, and a special meeting may be required in April. Exact dates and locations are yet to be determined.