Special Applications and Services Meeting Announcement

[Joyce Reynolds <[e-mail]>]

	Special Applications and Services Meeting Announcement

		    John Klensin	APP
		    Joyce Reynolds	USV
		    Erik Huizer		APP

This is to announce a combined Application Area and User Services Area
session at the upcoming IETF.  The session is meant to coordinate
efforts in Application related groups in these two Areas of the IETF.
The session takes place on Thursday 0930-1200.  The session is split
into two parts:

         Applications Area Directorate Open Meeting (apples)
            (0930-1045)

         Integrated Information Architecture (iia) 
            (1045-1200)


First part of the session:
==========================

 Open Applications Area Directorate meeting (apples)
 ---------------------------------------------------
 
 Within the IETF there are currently a lot of application related
 efforts going on. In the past year there has been some reshuffling of
 Applications related IETF activities:

	 - Integration of OSI related work in Applications Area
	 - Creation of WGs that are chartered in both the User
           Services AND the Applications Area.
	 - Creation of the Service Applications Area
 
 The Applications Area Directorate and the IESG are trying to keep
 these in line and coordinated. However, it has been our experience
 that often enough participants in Application related WGs are not
 aware of similar or related work in other IETF WGs. As a result of
 this it happens sometimes that valuable input from one part of the
 IETF community to a certain spec, is only given at a very late stage,
 which is of course not beneficial to the result.
 
 To make people aware of what is going on in the IETF with regard to
 applications, this meeting intents to give an overview of ongoing
 work, and issues under discussion in the various WGs. The goal of
 this meeting is to assure the right level of expertise in each WG to
 cover all aspects of the work within that WG.
 
 We strongly encourage all people who participate in any Applications
 related WG, to attend this session.
 

Second part of the session:
===========================

Integrated Information Architecture (IIA) meeting in Houston

When IESG created the IAFA, IIIR, NIR, URI, and WNILS working groups,
it did so as components of an overall effort to develop a single
coordinated Internet architectures for information naming, discovery,
and retrieval system.  The working groups involved have made rapid
progress, but occasionally at the expense of coordination with each
other, with other IETF WGs, and with existing practice outside IETF.
It has seemed to the responsible area directors that coordinated
efforts are even more important today as these efforts overlap and
intertwine.

This session is an open discussion of IIA issues with the chairs of
the five WGs and the three area directors to determine what level of
coordination of overlapping facilities is still appropriate and how to
accomplish it.  The results will include a progress report to IETF on
the development of the integrated information service, as required by
the charter statement.

A copy of the original charter and IESG position statement follows for
reference.

---------------------

		Integrated Information Architecture

Many new networked services to identify, access, and retrieve
information resources have sprung up in the last several years --
archie, WAIS, and Netfind, to name only three.  Now, much as the
Internet has tied many disparate networks together into an integrated
system, the pressing problem is how to integrate these many new
services into a single coordinated Internet information naming,
discovery, and retrieval system.

There are three vital areas of this integration effort that the IESG
is interested in pursuing:

    	1) The identification, cataloging, and documentation of networked
  	   information services, new and old.

    	2) The standardization of descriptions and identification 
           schemes for networked resources, and the distribution and
    	   implementation of these identifiers.  

    	3) The integration and interoperability of the various 
   	   new information services.

To this end, the IESG is creating three new working groups:

	1) Networked Information Retrieval (NIR) -- NIR will work on the
	   first issue above by identifying, cataloging, and documenting
	   networked information services.  The result will be a published
	   catalog of network information retrieval services.  In addition,
	   NIR will liase with other organizations working on this goal,
	   such as RARE ISUS and CNI. 

    	2) Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) --  URI will concentrate
    	   on the second issue above, particularly on the standardization 
           and implementation of identification schemes for networked
   	   resources.  There will be two primary components in this 
           effort: a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) which is a string 
           which tells how to locate a document.  The second part is a 
           Universal Resource Serial Number, which is used to uniquely 
           identify a resource, so that one can, for example tell if 
           two documents with different file names are, in fact, the 
           same.  The standard identification scheme developed by
           URI will be used by NIR to define the standard resource
           formats.

   	3) Integration of Internet Information Resources (IIIR) --
   	   IIIR will work on the third issue by developing technical
   	   specifications and documentation for a) interoperation between
   	   the various information services and b) the integration of
    	   new information services into the existing CIM (combined
    	   information mesh).  After the specifications for interoperation
    	   have been completed, IIIR will examine the need for additional
    	   protocols necessary to further integrate the CIM, including
    	   gateway protocols, query routing protocols, and other 
    	   mechanisms.

In addition to the above named groups, the IETF wishes to facilitate
the standardization of descriptions and data formats for various
specific information services by chartering single-protocol working
groups which will work on this standardization.  Examples of such
groups are the Internet Anonymous FTP Archive group (IAFA), which is
working on standardization of anonymous FTP archives, and the new
Whois Network Information Lookup Service (WNILS), which is working on
standardization of services using the WHOIS protocol.

The IESG considers these WGs to be components of a single coordinated
IETF effort to create an integrated Internet information architecture.
Therefore, the chairs and membership of each group will be active
participants in the other groups.  The overall coordination of this
effort will be under the joint management of the Applications and User
Services Area.

Due to the importance of an Integrated Internet Information Service
Architecture, the IESG requests the working group chairs and the
Applications and User Services area directors to jointly expand this
brief overview into a more fully fleshed out architectural statement,
and to issue periodic progress reports describing how the integrated
information service is developing.

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