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What's New in The Open Group

Mike Lambert introduced this session, which provided a valuable update on the In3 Initiative and on one or two topics that were not otherwise being covered.

What is In3?

Terry Blevins began his presentation by explaining that each forum during the week would have the opportunity to have a more detailed presentation on In3: the Open Group's strategy for Integrated Information Infrastructure.

Interoperability has been a register requirement in The Open Group customer council for some time. Given the vastness of this term and its various meanings, the Open Group staff decided to take concrete action to understand what was really behind the requirement. To do this they deployed the Business Scenario process - a tool to generate a clear understanding of business needs which is a product of The Open Group’s process produced in The Open Group’s Architecture Framework.  The In3 problem was uncovered using the business scenario process with 2 major manufacturers in a workshop and then further details were extracted with members of the Customer Council in another workshop. Integrated access to integrated information is the key challenge that people are facing.

Definition of Interoperability

First it was discovered that we needed a general yet useful working definition for interoperability. There were many definitions, all of which were fairly specific to technologies or areas of specialization, for examples object interoperability was defined to discuss a technical issue, or library interoperability described a subject area issue.  After some very through work the following definition was adopted: "The ability of two or more entities or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged to meet a defined mission or objective"

The customer problem statement that emerged was “I could run my business better if I could gain operational efficiencies improving the many different business processes of the enterprise both internal, and spanning the key interactions with suppliers, customers, and partners using integrated information, and integrated access to that information.”  Terry explained that the Open Group had learned that this is the key barrier in many industries - finance, petrochemical, and many others.  There is a common problem across many industries, and there is the possibility that there are common solutions, or at least common components, that will help the businesses of  many organizations.

The goal is for all the varied systems that organizations have to support the improvement in business processes.  There are all kinds of reasons for many different systems to exist, but the fact remains that these systems have to be integrated in order to provide integrated information.  Then there is the need for an integrated way of accessing that integrated information.  The technology environment is inevitably heterogeneous, and always will be.  But at the moment there is just too much information that cannot be easily accessed and managed.

So what can The Open Group do?  Traditionally we have worked in the technical area, but there are other spaces - business

There is the business imperative to optimize for operational efficiencies or competitive advantage. This comes about for many reasons: mergers re-organizations, or simply the need to optimize the entire value chain.   The need for organizations to have an Integrated Information Infrastructure stems from the need to improve operational efficiencies.  Business processes must be integrated horizontally and vertically to improve operational efficiencies, however the systems supporting those business processes present obstacles because they contain multiple self-contained or point solutions where information is not currently (and can not easily be) shared – that is there is a lack of integrated information.  Additionally, where access to the information in the multiple systems is provided by point solutions that don’t easily and readily submit to requests from other access paths – that is a lack of integrated access.  Note these problems aren’t merely about information technology, they start with business issues, business policies and are sometime supported by information technology.  The barriers that must be broken down are at both the business and technical levels.

The Open Group intends to be the premier place where people come to tackle this significant issue. The Open Group intends to provide opportunities to work in each area needed to solve this issue.  Opportunities might include:

• Methods to help one understand business processes, priorities, and information needs, best practices guide to help one do the things that others have done successfully, practical guiding principles, frequently found issues and ways to address them.
• An enterprise architecture method, best practices guideline for building a business information directory, best practice guide for assessing mechanisms for information delivery based on business need
• Overall gap and overlap report on necessary standards, reports on applicability of alternative technologies and standards for, Security services to protect information as necessary, Services that open up the information as necessary - Broker services in the infrastructure, Integrated access services for consumers, 
• Profiles of the standards as architecture building blocks, integrated standards for security services to protect information as necessary, Services that open up the information as necessary, Broker services in the infrastructure, Integrated access services for consumers, proof of concept, certified products for conformance to standards

Testing and Certification

James de Raeve provided a valuable update on the Open Group's work in this area.

DMTF - CIM Certification

James reported that DMTF - the Distributed Management Task Force - has retained The Open Group to develop a certification program for the CIM specification, including a Certification Policy (how can products be tested to see whether they conform to the CIM specification), a Test Architecture, Program materials and a Test suite, for operation by DMTF or a 3rd party as required.  This involves building a test tool that can read the specification and derive a testing approach.  The test is being built with a view to it being operated and used by other organizations, so the specifications are being developed for used by DMTF or maybe another organizations.

Linux Standards Base

The Open Group has been retained by the Free Standards Group to develop a certification program for Linux based systems and applications that run upon them.  The target is the Linux Standard Base specification (LSB), an application binary interface for Linux.

SIF (Schools Interoperability Framework)

SIF is an organization whose membership comes from K-12 (kindergarten to age 12) education suppliers and school systems in the US.  Standards exist for data interchange between software systems that run schools.  So far The Open Group has been retained to develop certification policy and test architecture; new work is centering on developing test suites.

DVB-MHP - Digital Video Broadcast - Multimedia Home Platform

This specification is part of the Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) standards under development in the European Broadcasting Union ( EBU), whose standards cover all aspects of digital broadcast for terrestrial, satellite, cable and leverage off other ISO and ETSI standards.

A groups of manufacturers (Sony, Mitsubishi et al) have formed an ad hoc consortium - The MHP Test Consortium (DVB-MHP TC) - to provide testing for extended applications for digital televisions, such as enhanced TV, customizable applications (stock analysis, news headlines), games and gambling, on-line shopping. This consortium is funding The Open Group to develop a test suite.  Functionality includes Java and HTML APIs, and a range of others.

The Single UNIX Specification - The Authorized Guide

Mike Lambert reported the completion of this major activity.  The development of the Single UNIX Specification had been conducted in conjunction with IEEE.  It is the authorized guide, having been written by the people who produced the specification.  It includes a CD-ROM, which has proved to be of real value to users.  The book itself tells people what's new, and what the migration issues are - amongst much else.  Because of the demand for a printed book, this is one of the few Open Group outputs that remains in printed book form.

The book contains

• An overview of the history of the UNIX system and the Single UNIX Specification
• Guidance on how to use the Single UNIX Specification
• Detailed Interface tables 
• Detailed migration information between version 2 and version 3
• C language migration information
• The Open Brand
• And more…

On the CDROM there is:

• The Single UNIX Specification Versions 1, 2 and 3 in html and PDF
• IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (POSIX®)
• PDF Browser software (Adobe Acroread and xpdf)
• The complete Motif, CDE and X11R5 specifications in PDF
• X11R6 Protocol specification, XNFS 3W, XNS v5.2, TPI v2, DLPI v2
• And more...