Proposed New Charter: Open Grid Services Infrastructure (OGSI-WG)
DRAFT v3

Chairs: Steve Tuecke (ANL), Jeff Frey (IBM)

OGSI Working Group Charter, v3

Under the GGF OGSI working group's original charter from March 2002 ("review and refine the OGSI specification and other documents that derive from this specification"), this working group wrote the OGSI v1.0 specification, which was submitted into the GGF recommendation track document process in April 2003.

With this initial, core task completed, the OGSI working group will focus on the following tasks:

1) The OGSI v1.0 specification entered the GGF document process in April 2003, with the hope of becoming a GGF recommendation. As described in GFD-C.1, the OGSI specification must first pass through an initial public comment period before coming a "proposed recommendation" (GFD-R-P). During this time, the OGSI wg will answer questions, defend decisions, and/or make minor changes to the specification as necessitated by the comments. Once the document is accepted as a GFD-R-P, it then enters a 6-24 month period to demonstrate operational experience of multiple implementations of the specification before it can be considered to become a "GGF recommendation" (GFD-R). During this time, the working group will write an informational document that describes the operational experience of implementations of the specification, as supporting material for being considered for a "GGF recommendation".

2) If, during the operational experience phase of the OGSI v1.0 document process, the working group decides that changes are needed before the OGSI specification can be considered for a recommendation, the OGSI working group will develop a OGSI v1.1 specification. This v1.1 specification, if required, would have the minimal changes required to make OGSI suitable to become a GGF recommendation, and is expected to be a short activity (1-2 months). Upon submission of a v1.1 specification, the working group will perform the tasks described in #1 above to shepherd that v1.1 specification through the GGF document process.

3) The working group will author an "OGSI Primer" informational document, which provides non-normative explanation of the OGSI v1.0 specification. This document is expected to be completed by the end of 2003.

4) Because WSDL v1.2 has features needed for OGSI v1.0, but WSDL v1.2 will be completed after OGSI v1.0, OGSI has adopted an interim solution called GWSDL as a basis for defining the OGSI interfaces. In order to promote interoperability of GWSDL-defined, OGSI-compliant services using WSDL v1.1 tooling, the OGSI working group will write a recommendation-track specification document that specifies how GWSDL documents with serviceData elements should be transformed into standard WSDL v1.1 documents. This specification is expected to be completed by GGF9 in October 2003.

5) Once WSDL v1.2 is finalized, the OGSI working group will write a recommendation-track specification document that specifies how GWSDL documents with serviceData elements should be transformed into standard WSDL v1.2 documents. The completion date of this specification is undetermined, due to the dependency on WSDL v1.2 completion (expected late 2003), but it is expected to be completed 3 months after WSDL v1.2 is finished.

6) OGSI v1.0 defines the abstract properties to which all Grid Service Handles must conform. However, particular URI schemes for handles and how such schemes should be resolved into Grid Service References was removed from the OGSI specification in an early draft. In order to promote interoperable OGSI implementations, the OGSI working group will write a recommendation track specification that defines at least one handle scheme, along with how handles of that scheme should be resolved to references. This specification is expect to be completed by GGF9 in October 2003.

7) The consensus of the OGSI working group is that an OGSI v2.0 specification will be required at some point in the future for the following reasons:

A) During the development of OGSI v1.0, the working group purposely deferred some items for which consensus could not be reached in a timely manner, but which should be considered in a subsequent version of the OGSI specification.

B) After the WSDL v1.2 specification is released by W3C (expected late 2003), the OGSI v2.0 specification will written to use the final WSDL v1.2.

C) Web services is still a rapidly evolving space. Given OGSI's close relationship to many Web services standards, it is critical that OGSI continue to evolve to stay in tight synchronization with the larger Web services standards community. The OGSI working group expects to evolve the OGSI specification to maintain this tight synchronization with Web services standards.

* In addition to the evolving WSDL and SOAP standards upon which OGSI depends, a number of Web services binding-level standards are emerging in areas such as security and reliability. The OGSI working group expects to evolve the OGSI specification to exploit such binding-level standards as appropriate as they emerge.

* The WSCI, BPEL4WS, and emerging W3C Choreography Working Group specifications define approaches to conversational flow and business processes that imply a particular approach of interacting with stateful Web services. A fundamental part of OGSI v1.0 is the definition of a different approach to the expression of stateful Web services. We would like to see industry alignment around a single approach. The OGSI working group intends to work with the rest of the Web services community to help standardize such an approach, and to evolve the OGSI specification as appropriate to use that standard approach.

D) Many OGSI implementations will naturally want to leverage existing Web services implementations. The OGSI working group will continue to evaluate the experiences from OGSI implementation efforts, and evolve the OGSI specification as appropriate to better accommodate and better exploit these Web services implementations.

E) Assuming a sufficient "OGSI Primer" is written, the OGSI working group intends to remove virtually all non-normative text from the v2.0 specification.

The OGSI working group expects to gather requirements, evaluate related technologies, and begin discussions of possible solutions for inclusion in OGSI v2.0. However, the working group does not expect to expend substantial effort on a v2.0 specification until late 2003, at the earliest. When the working group decides to begin serious work on v2.0, it will re-charter the working group with GGF to establish scope and time lines on that effort.