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Directory Program Group

Directory Interoperability Forum

“IBM, Novell, Oracle, DCL, Lotus Development, and ISOCOR Rally Industry to Advance Market for Open Directory Applications

Over 30 directory providers and supporters back open standards to ensure applications work seamlessly in mixed computing environments”

BUSINESS WIRE—July 7, 1999

“The Open Group is very pleased to have the input of directory leaders to work with us to accelerate application development and interoperability through directory standards, certification testing, and conformance programs,’’ said Allen Brown, President and CEO, The Open Group.

“The expected results of the [Directory Interoperability] Forum (DIF) will be a major leap forward in directory interoperability and customer confidence when using multi-vendor solutions.  The combination of the vendors’ efforts, in conjunction with our own, will ensure that when a developer writes an application using LDAP, it will work consistently in the market.”

Directory Program Launched

The Open Group has launched its Directory Program.  This Program will help to bring about the implementation and deployment of vendor-neutral, interoperable Directory solutions.

A proposal presented at the July  Conference by IBM and Novell for LDAP branding envisaged two schemes: an LDAP Brand for client and server implementations, and an LDAP Application brand for directory applications.

It was agreed to take the existing draft Open Group LDAP Server usage profiles as a starting point, develop outline feature lists from them, define interoperability tests for those features for use at the next DirConnect event, and to produce final profile definitions based on the interoperability experience at DirConnect.

There is a proposal to co-locate the next DirConnect with The Open Group Conference in Washington, D.C., during the week of 25-29 October, 1999.

The event is being planned jointly with the Security Program Group to feature interoperability testing of certificates and will be a useful stage of LDAP brand development.

Architecture Program Group

The TOGAF Architecture Development Methodology is already a rigorous, practical, experience-based method for enterprise architecture development.  The Open Group will build on this achievement by evolving the TOGAF Program into an acknowledged center of expertise and a worldwide forum.

Building Blocks are a key feature of the work program in 1999.  The Program Group aims to provide a means of defining architectural building blocks in a way that allows their interactions with other building blocks to be captured, and in a way that permits real products to be tested for conformance and procured to fulfill the defined functions.

At the July Conference, the U.K. National Health Service gave an update on the continuing use of TOGAF by the NHS.  Oracle, Canada, gave a presentation on Oracle’s enterprise architecture method, showing the mapping to the TOGAF Architecture Development Method, and described experience in using TOGAF on live projects.

The Micro-electronics and Computer Technology Consortium (MCC) gave a presentation on the state-of-the-art in Architecture Description Languages, followed by a briefing on MCC’s own Architecture Description Markup Language (ADML) and a key project undertaken by MCC in collaboration with The Open Group, to develop a proof of concept for a Building Blocks Description Language.

The TOGAF Program is on schedule to deliver the Building Blocks Description Language proof of concept in Q3 1999 and the enhanced Version 5 of TOGAF in Q4 1999.

Mobile Computing Task Force

Work with the Wireless Access Protocol (WAP) Forum is one of The Open Group’s initial efforts in the mobile computing arena.  In Q2 The Open Group completed development of the test assertions for the WAP Forum.  It also signed a contract with the WAP Forum to develop application layer tests based on the test assertions for WAP 1.1 WML, WMLScript, and WMLScript Library Specifications.  (WML is the WAP Mark-up Language.  These Specifications are derived from HTML and Ecmascript.)  The Open Group has implemented these tests in-house, made them available to Beta Test sites, and made them generally available from mid-August.

The test methodology and test management software for the WAP tests are built on the work The Open Group did on the network client test suite for the Network Computing program.  The Open Group has submitted a proposal to the WAP Forum for the development and operation of the WAP certification program.  It hopes to be invited to bid on the development of tests for the rest of the WAP 1.1 application layer and underlying protocols in Q3 1999.