draft minutes from houston

[Peter Furniss <[e-mail]>]

Please send corrections about lies and distortions in time
for me to submit on Friday.
Peter

Minutes of the Minimal OSI Upper-layers Working Group 
(thinosi)

The thinosi Working Group met on 2nd November at the Amsterdam 
IETF.

1. Status and content of upper-layer cookbook

The question of whether the cookbook was a parallel specification of 
the OSI protocols or a mixture of profile and implementation advice 
was finalised, following the earlier email discussion.

It transpired that AD Dave Crocker and several others had originally 
thought that we were specifying an alternative protocol to provide the 
OSI upper-layer functions, and they had been surprised to discover 
the protocol was the same, or a subset of the standard protocols.

The group accepted Dave's view that there could be no such thing 
as "re-specification" of a protocol - there was only one defining text. 
Anything which restated, without modification, what was in the 
original specification was really an implementation guide. As such it 
could become an information RFC, not a standards track document.

However, the cookbook also subsets the standard protocols, and in 
this respect is similar to the profiles produced by the OSI "regional 
workshops" - OIW, EWOS and AOW. Such subsetting is protocol 
specification, and Dave said would be suitable for standards track
if the base documents are

	a) the result of an open process 
	b) stable (for Proposed status); or published standard (for 
IETF Full standard status)


Dave suggested the model of the SMI RFC, which cites the OSI 
ASN.1 Basic Encoding Rules and defines a subset of them could be 
taken as an example of the style.

Peter had already produced a first attempt at separating the profile-
like aspects of the cookbook, treating the OSI base standards and 
the two general profiles (Common Upper-Layer Requirements - Part 
1 and Part 3) as the cited documents. Both the ISO and regional 
workshop processes meet the openness requirement. However, 
although CULR Part 1 (general requirements) is stable, and about to 
begin draft International Standardised Profile ballot, part 3 is not 
stable and is some way from international ballot. It was agreed that 
Peter would expand the profile, citing just the base standards and 
CULR-1 and reproducing the CULR-3 restrictions. It includes a few 
further restrictions that are not currently in CULR-3. Peter would
submit this as an Internet Draft. 

Peter will also revise the cookbook again, referring to the other 
document.

2. Revision of charter

These decisions require revision of the charter to reflect what we are 
actually doing. It was agreed that since the "thinDAP" work has not 
progressed, and in any case would be an informational RFC, it 
should be dropped from the work plan.

Peter Furniss will work up a draft revision and post it to the list 
(really)

3. Application-specific mapping documents.

There was no clear view on  possibility of defining application-
specific mapping documents (e.g. how to use Z39.50 with the 
cookbook). Peter will explain this ides to the mailing list.

4 Reduced-OSI

Following the realisation that many people had expected, and 
wanted, the group to investigate alternative, lighter, protocols, it was 
agreed the mailing list would be opened to provide an (interim) forum 
for discussion of this. Walter Lazear had identified at least 7 different 
groups (mostly .gov or .mil) interested in this, and at least two others 
were represented (electric power companies) or known of (civil air-
ground). Walter had a one-page summary of this to hand. The 
concentration would be on trying to establish what the requirements 
really were - i.e. which parts of OSI function were still wanted.

This widening of the list will not be formally part of the WG work 
plan. It is just taking advantage of a mailing list that people may have 
thought was doing it anyway!

5 Parallel documents

Jim Quigley reported that CULR-3 had been revised further, and the 
OIW ULSIG were concentrating on getting the 
compliance/conformance terminology sorted out.

The X/Open XTI/mOSI specification is still about to be published as 
a preliminary specification.

Jim Quigley reported that ITU-T SG7 were planning to make the 
cookbook into a Recommendation.

6 Implementations

Terry Sullivan (Florida Center for Library Automation) had released 
his "tosi" implementation three days previously.

Peter Furniss has started extending the X/osi code to a more general 
thinosi implementation, with XTI/mOSI as the upper interface. He 
hopes to have it available around the end of the year.

7. Next time

On present plans, the group does not expect to meet in Seattle.