Subject: RE: [XCON] Draft defining a Common Data Model for XCON

From: "Morgan, Dave" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2005 15:24:37 -0400

Orit brings up a good point which needs to be resolved straight away.
Should we:

1) Create a new namespace called common-conference-info (or
XCon-conference-info for that matter) that incorporates all the
conferencing elements needed in XCON to facilitate data manipulation
protocols that operate on the conference object?

OR

2) Use the conference-info namespace and schema in the sipping
conferencing package and propose conference package extensions?

Discussion on the mailing list of this topic would be greatly
appreciated.

Dave and Oscar

------------------------------------------------------------------------
David P. Morgan, PhD
VP, Architecture & Planning
Fidelity Investments Systems Company - Telecom
Phone:  617 563-2178
Fax:      617 385 2122
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-----Original Message-----
From: Orit Levin [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2005 5:14 PM
To: Gonzalo Camarillo; XCON
Cc: Morgan, Dave
Subject: RE: [XCON] Draft defining a Common Data Model for XCON

Hi guys,

It's really good that we have more people who have the cycles to invest
into this work. I am still working on the next CCCP draft which will
incorporate the lessons that we learned internally. One of these is, for
example, the extensibility mechanism that I will include in the upcoming
CCCP draft and will be relevant to this discussion as well.

These are my thoughts about the draft:

1. Although in the Introduction the draft says that it is compliant with
the Conference Event Package, it is not clear whether the draft aims at
expanding the 'conference-type' defined in the package or it aims at
redefining most of the information in a new namespace (as hinted by the
xmlns:tns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:common-conference-schema" in the
Example).

2. If the intention is the latter, I think that we need to understand
what the practical usage of the new common-conference-schema  namespace
is. I guess that you had in mind a data manipulation protocol that
operates on a conference object of that type. I went though a similar
exercise in CCCP. My conclusion is that you don't necessarily need or
want to schematize all this information under a single XML tree
belonging to a new namespace. For example, in CCCP we are referring to
the Conference Event Package definitions without redefining any of them.
Along the same lines - it is really not a good practice to redefine the
XML definitions with their semantics in multiple documents.

3. That being said, I am sure that many new elements in the draft are
good candidates for the conference package extensions. Any information
that potentially needs to be distributed to the conference subscribers
would fall under this category. I suggest to start working together on
the Conference Package Extensions draft in parallel to any other
efforts. Just to note, the way the current draft "extends" (in case this
was the intention) the conference package schema in the Example - is not
XML compliant with the conference event package schema itself. According
to the Conference Event Package schema - any extension MUST come from
"other" namespace with all the syntactic implications.
 
4. In the past, the main debate/disconnect around the "conference data
model" was not so much about the common information, but about the
template: what it is, how it looks like and, not less importantly, how
the template fits into or lives side-by-side with the conference-type of
the Conference Event Package. Your draft seems to suggest (under all the
disclaimers above ;-) that the templates are included (as extensions)
inside the conference-type. I personally like this approach because it
automatically allows for distribution of any included information
through the conference package notifications. (Of cause, only the
information complying with the local policies will be included.) To
rephrase, any information that is not defined as the Conference Event
Package extension will require a separate mechanism (or at least a
different event package) to be communicated to the interested parties.

5. Still we desperately need to conclude how a template relates to the
conference data definition (and capture this in the framework)...

Orit. 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On 
> Behalf Of Gonzalo Camarillo
> Sent: Friday, September 23, 2005 5:10 AM
> To: XCON
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: [XCON] Draft defining a Common Data Model for XCON
> 
> Folks,
> 
> we have just submitted a draft defining a common data model for XCON.
> Until it appears in the archives, you can fetch it from:
> 
> http://users.piuha.net/gonzalo/temp/draft-novo-xcon-common-dat
> a-model-00.txt
> 
> We have taken a stab at defining the XML schema of a common 
> data model for XCON. The idea would be that whichever 
> conference policy protocol we define, it uses this data model.
> 
> You comments are appreciated. We hope to have discussions on 
> this topic on the mailing list.
> 
> The following is the abstract of the draft:
> 
>     This document collects, organizes, and describes the conference
>     variables that have been introduced in various protocol 
> drafts of the
>     XCON and SIPPING working groups.  The goal of this document is to
>     allow the conference control protocols to use a unified common
>     conference information data model for XCON.  This 
> document formally
>     defines an Extensible Markup Language (XML) Schema that represents
>     the common conference information in a conferencing server.  The
>     information is modeled as a series of elements, each of which
>     contains a set of children and attributes.
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Gonzalo
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> XCON mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/xcon
> 

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