SSSWG - July 1996 Minutes
IEEE Storage Systems Standards Working Group Meeting
Minutes
July 9-11, 1996
Breckenridge, Colorado
Attendance:
Stuart Craig Exabyte Corporation
scraig@exabyte.com 303-442-4333
Brian Dodd Wang Software
brian@avail.com 303-546-4232
Dixon Hutchinson Exabyte Corporation
hutch@exabyte.com 303-417-7751
Merritt Jones The MITRE Corporation
Merritt@mitre.org 703-883-5471
Gary Mueller StorageTek
Gary_Mueller@stortek.com 303-673-6498
Joel Williams Systems Engineering and Security
joel.williams@ses-inc.com 301-441-3694
Rich Wrenn Digital Equipment Corp.
wrenn@cookie.enet.dec.com 719-548-2887
1. Dave Skinner (chairman) learned at the last minute that he would not be
able to attend. Jack Cole (vice chair) had notified us earlier that he
would not be able to attend. Merritt Jones (MSTC sponsor) was the only
attending officer and he ran the meeting. Rich Wrenn volunteered to take
minutes.
2. We had one new attendee, Brian Dodd from Wang. Bill Wolfe, please add
Brian's name to the roster.
Brian Dodd
Wang Software
4760 Walnut Street
Boulder, CO 80301
brian@avail.com
303-546-4232
Not an IEEE member
Brian's interests were in the PVR, PVL, and MCS (media changer service).
3. General discussion
We had an interesting discussion regarding Wang's proposal for a MCS.
Wang's interest stems from their contract with Microsoft who was reported
to be looking for a media changer API. Microsoft was also reported to be
looking for some basic media management APIs that allow removable media
resources to be shared among applications. It was reported that
Microsoft will try to include some media management in NT V5.0.
We agreed to try to get Microsoft to do a presentation to the P1244
committee regarding their direction and requirements.
(Brian and Merritt)
4. The status of the PVR standard was reported. We have an API which is
described through a set of HTML man pages and a model that resides in a
postscript document. Both of these are available for review on the web.
All that remains is to merge these into a standard document.
During the time between now and the next meeting, we will attempt to
merge the API and the model into a standard document (Joel and Rich).
It is also clear that we need a paper describing the PVR requirements and
rationale. We will try to write such a document before the next meeting
(Rich).
5. The MCS effort stalled shortly after the last meeting, but interest has
increased.
A PAR was written and that will be submitted immediately. (Dixon and
Merritt)
A white paper was drafted describing requirements and rationale and that
should be posted on the web before the next meeting. (Dixon)
6. Merritt Jones proposed that we change the dates of the September meeting
so that it would be held the Sunday and Monday before the Goddard mass
storage conference instead of being held the Monday before and the Friday
following the Goddard meeting. A vote was taken and it passed without
opposition. As a result, the September meeting will begin at 1:30 PM on
Sunday September 15 in College Park Maryland and last through Monday
September 16.
The November meeting is still planned to be held in the San Jose area
on November 12. No further details are available. Dixon will check with
Hamid regarding this meeting.
7. A discussion was held regarding officers. We decided to hold an election
at the September meeting.
We decided to do the following as soon as possible.
- Formally announce an election. (Merritt)
- Open the floor for nominations. (Merritt)
8. Since we have the majority of the material needed for a PVR standard
posted on the web, it was suggested that we start asking for comments.
It was pointed out that we should probably have a requirements and
rationale document before we start asking for comments.
We decided to do the following between now and the next meeting.
- Write a requirements and rationale document for the PVR (see above)
- Ask potential customers for comments regarding the proposed PVR and
ask whether or not they would require it in their RFPs?
(Merritt, Joel,Dixon)
- Create a list of PVR Balloters. (Merritt)
- Broadcast a request for comments over the reflector. (Merritt)
9. As a result of the low attendance, we had a discussion regarding our
future. This was a rather lengthy and unstructured discussion,
the result
of which was to pose a set of questions to be answered in September that
would determine whether the P1244 committee should continue. Those
questions were:
- Will we have a chairman to drive the group?
- Should we continue to work on the component standards or should we
change our focus to the model?
- Should we ballot the PVR standard?
10. The rest of the meeting was spent in break-out sessions. Those included
a MCS session and a PVR session.
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