Formulation of Working Groups
Community forums for deciding on standards/ processes within (and beyond) the
OPeNDAP
community
The
OPeNDAP community process draws on experience from other community processes: e.g. IETF,
OGC, ISO, JCP, Unidata.
To meet the needs of the
OPeNDAP community, the following attributes of the process had broad agreement:
Working Group Attributes
-
OPeNDAP working groups (OWG) should be formed with a specific focus, deliverables, timeframe and minimum membership.
OPeNDAP would welcome agency, project or institutional sponsorship and/or co-sponsorship.
+ Specific focus - The working groups must define the areas of their work efforts as covering a)
OPeNDAP the software, b)
OPeNDAP (DAP) the reference implementation, or c) both. Working Groups should only be formed for well-defined topics where the community feels the development of a deliverable is a high priority.
+ Deliverables/outcomes - Deliverables produced by a OWG fall into two categories. First, an OWG may produce software, either prototype or production. Second, an OWG may produce documentation including: Software specifications; Standard Operating Procedure documents; Best Practices documents; and Technical Notes. In some cases the OWG may reccommend that the ideas developed be taken to a more formal standards organization to be developed further.
+ Timeframe - OWGs should aim to complete their discussions, white papers, documents/proposals within
a nominal 3 month timeframe. In cases where prototypes/software are to be produced the timeframe
can be extended with OWG executive (see next item) approval), especially where funding is sought to complete the project. The intent is not to have stagnant or dormant efforts.
+ Minimum membership is 3 people.
- The OWG executive is nominated by the community and appointed by the
OPeNDAP advisory board, with
membership of 5-7 people, a nominal term limit for membership is 2 years. Members may serve
more than one term (with board approval). The first task of the executive is to formalize the OWG Terms of Reference.
- The OWG executive will make recommendations on how to take OWG outcomes to standards processes and other relevant organizations for broader community comment, adoption, etc.
- The
OPeNDAP advisory board membership will be broadened (serves
OPeNDAP Inc.) to accommodate
this expanded role and term limits will be applied to the board.
- OWGs can be proposed by anyone but must be chartered within the
OPeNDAP community by the OWG
executive.
- OWG forums should be public (via opendap.org supported wiki) EXCEPT for any OWG which addresses
security of data service systems (discussion on if we can/should use US-CERT as an announcement forum
for security matters is an item to be pursued).
- The only requirement for participation and comment on OWG forums is to be a registered user on the
opendap.org provided wiki.
- The approval and decision making process may vary depending on the scope of the subject area. The
OWG proposers must identify a suitable decision making process (if it is required) and the OWG executive
must approve that process before the OWG can be chartered. In some cases, standards and specifications
must have broad community comment and consensus before being adopted.
Possible OPeNDAP Working Groups
*Virtualization (Aggregation)
*Server-side processing
*Geospatial Interoperability
*Security
*Hyrax and *DS (TDS, GDS, FDS, etc.)
*Semantics
*DAPPER
*netCDF C++ client
*Response types
*Metrics
*Asynchronous transactions
*DAP4
--
PeterFox - 20 Mar 2007
