Network Data Management Committee Meeting Announcement

The data management discussions at the recent NWG meeting resulted in

the formation of a Network Data Management Committee to be chaired by

Doug McKay, IBM. The purpose of the committee, as stated in RFC 146,

is:

(a) to classify the issues involved and to propose
various approaches;
(b) to integrate the hitherto independent network
activities that address problems in the area of data sharing; and
(c) to set up and coordinate appropriate experiments
to test the services developed and to evaluate
alternative approaches.

An informal meeting was held Wednesday morning, 19 May to estab- lish an

approach for achieving the above objectives. The attendees were:

         Peggy Karp           MITRE
         Doug McKay           IBM
         Tom O'Sullivan       Raytheon
         Ari Ollikainin       UCLA
         Dr. Larry Roberts    ARPA
         Dick Winter          CCA

Due to an overlap with a file transfer committee meeting, membership of

the data management committee was not established.

A decision was made to hold a data management meeting at CCA in

Cambridge prior to the next general NWG meeting. The structure and

format of the meeting will be similar to that of the network graphics

meeting (RFC 87); that is, the price of admission for an organization is

a working paper on one or more of the areas chosen for discussion,

accompanied by an oral presentation.

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The meeting will provide an opportunity for varying viewpoints on

network data sharing to be expressed. The essential issues will be

educed, thus fulfilling the committee's objective (a). Compre- hensive

plans for attaining objectives (b) and (c) can then be established. We

expect that responsibilities for carrying out objectives (b) and (c)

will be assumed by interested committee members.

One of the original objectives of the meeting was to elicit comments on

the data language for the data computer, following a presentation of

design specifications by CCA. Due to a change in scheduling at CCA,

they will discuss the facilities to be provided by the data computer

rather than language itself. Therefore meeting participants will have

an opportunity to provide input to the language design which will be

specifically directed at provision of the facilities.

Some suggested topics for position papers are:

(a) philosophical discussion on computer network
data sharing;
(b) syntactic and semantic considerations for data
description and access languages;
(c) approaches for the integration of data handling
services already available;
(d) experimentation methodology for evaluating
alternative data sharing techniques;
(e) information content and structure of a network
data directory; and
(f) operational or control protocol.

Any or all of the above topics can be addressed in a single paper.

Other ideas for position paper topics can be gleaned from RFC #s 144 and

146 Many of the comments made at the data management session, 18 May,

at the NWG meeting (RFC 164, pp. 26-29) can be expanded and expounded

upon.

Position papers should be submitted ti Doug McKay by 16 July (received

no later than 19 July). A meeting agenda, copies of all submitted

papers, and a background bibliography will be distributed to all

participants by 23 July. The meeting will be held at CCA, 565

Technology Square, Cambridge, Mass. from 2 August until 4 August. All

participants should contact Marty Ginsberg, CCA (617-491-3670) by 16

July for hotel reservations.

[ This RFC was put into machine readable form for entry ] [ into the online RFC archives by Simone Demmel 5/97 ]

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