XML Working Group

Meeting Notes

November 12, 2003

Owen Ambur noted that the government track at the XML 2003 conference has been scheduled for Thursday, December 11. He also announced that a town hall meeting on the emerging technology life-cycle management process has been scheduled for the evening of December 9. See http://www.xmlconference.org/xmlusa/2003/schedule.asp#thursday & http://www.xmlconference.org/xmlusa/2003/tuesday.asp#40

Roy Mogan announced that Adobe has acquired Yellow Dragon’s ebXML-compliant registry software, upon which our pilot XML registry is based. See http://xml.gov/registries.asp & http://www.adobe.com/enterprise/xml/ebxml.html

Lee Ellis announced that Dan Chenok has left OMB and he noted that Karen Evans is seeking bottom-up input from the CIO Council concerning priorities for action.

Joe Chiusano noted that SAML 2.0 will leverage the federated IDs fostered by the Liberty Alliance. See http://www.projectliberty.org/

Ken Sall asked about the status of the FEA security model, but no one could authoritatively say whether it would be issued as a separate model or be incorporated into the existing models.

With reference to the eForms portal, Lee suggested it may be appropriate for the xmlWG to address the formatting/presentation of forms.

Joe noted that he chairs the core components enablement subgroup of the ebXML registry technical committee and that the data modeling methodology for core components is syntax neutral. With reference to his Web Services/Registries pilot, Joe noted that it will provide an operational capabilities demonstration of a UDDI instance accessing an ebXML registry. However, he indicated it may be unrealistic to expect such a demonstration at the next quarterly component technology conference in January, so he is aiming for the April conference instead. He noted that Software AG has a UDDI directory with an HTTP interface.

Roy noted that NIST has two registry-related trials underway, one of which involves the National Software Reference Library and relates to such things as software security patches and obtaining legal evidence from computer hard drives.

Lee introduced Alan Proctor of Sytel to brief the group on the eForms catalog to be incorporated into the Business Gateway. See http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/gtob/compliance.htm

Alan said the Business Gateway will be a customer-facing, citizen-centered service to help businesses and individuals understand regulatory compliance issues. Five pilots will be conducted, two of which – surface coal mining and interstate trucking – have already been identified. Fourteen agencies are represented on the governance committee and eight subcommittees have been identified.

The second major thrust is to develop an eForms catalog pointing to forms wherever they are located, in whatever formats they exist. The catalog will pick up where forms.gov left off and will provide a lot of metadata around the forms. For example, each form will be mapped to the FEA Business Reference Model (BRM).

The eForms subcommittee is looking into the merits of providing a single software component, perhaps an open source module, whereby any form can be rendered, filled out, and submitted to any government agency through an XML gateway.

The third phase will focus on standardizing the data elements comprising the XML schemas for each form. However, initially the intent will be to capture all government forms in the catalog, including those that are only available on paper as well as various electronic formats.

Finally, Alan noted that all of the schemas and associated software components should be available via the Consolidated Component Repository (CCR). See http://xml.gov/minutes/20031015.htm#ccr

Cloe Vincent of SAIC introduced Steve Hartley of CollabNet, who in turn introduced Ravi Krishnamurphy.

Ravi conducted a demonstration of CollabNet’s SourceCast application via WebEx and telecon. He noted that SourceCast is Web-based except for a version control client. He showed My Start Page and My Projects and indicated that users can subscribe to projects of interest to them. He indicated the project workspace facilitates software development, KM (through document and file management), and technical communications. He said the application supports single sign-on and that members and roles can easily be established.

With respect to mailing lists and the announcements feature, Ken Sall asked if RSS feeds could be accommodated, and Ravi indicated they can be. He also said the discussion forums are secure by virtue of use of SSL through the Web interface, but that E-mail can be used to provide notification. He noted that everything in SourceCast is available at a URL that can be bookmarked.

Owen asked if SourceCast uses/supports WebDAV, and Ravi indicated the next release will and that it will be available around mid-year in 2004. See http://www.collab.net/developers/developer_projects/ & http://www.advogato.org/person/gstein/

With respect to version control, Ravi noted that SourceCast highlights changes in colors.

Regarding the Project Tracker feature, Ravi indicated users can specify their own XSD for project tracking and that it is a complete life-cycle tracker. Personnel can be associated with artifacts, comments can be provided, and attachments are accommodated. Global searches can be performed across all artifacts, with role-based access.

Ravi also indicated that XML import/export capabilities are provided. However, follow-up with Steve Hartley resulted in the following clarification of the scope of those capabilities:

Currently, the only existing SourceCast XML import/export capability is in the Project Tracker component. Project Tracker (PT) is our artifact tracking system derived from the Scarab open source project. PT XML import/export is used to populate/copy artifact information to/from the underlying database.

In light of the XML 2003 conference, the holidays, and the lack of meeting space, Owen indicated the working group may not meet in December. The next regularly scheduled meeting is set for January 21.

If you have any corrections or additions to these notes, please contact Owen_Ambur@fws.gov

Those in physical attendance, for part or all of the meeting, included:

Owen Ambur, Co-Chair

Lee Ellis, Co-Chair, GSA

Bruce Troutman, 8020 Data

Alan Proctor, Sytel

Roy Morgan, NIST, head of our Registry Project Team

Ken Sall, SiloSmashers

Joe Chiusano, Booz Allen Hamilton

Marcia Cash, Fish & Wildlife Service

Cloe Vincent, SAIC

General teleconferencing was not provided for this meeting, but Steve Hartley and Ravi Krishnamurphy of CollabNet participated via teleconference and WebEx.