RE: [obix] We need to get moving on ICALENDAR Binding

The current idea is to define a subset of
ICalendar used by most people and define a clean mapping to the oBIX model.

 

The translation b/w ICalendar and oBIX
would be machine processable, so client/servers could support both.

 

From: Considine, Toby
(Campus Services IT) [mailto:] 

Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2008
10:49 AM

To: 

Cc: 

Subject: [obix] We need to get
moving on ICALENDAR Binding

 

I
found a few similar efforts today.

 

http://68.142.116.68/docs/cd/B25553_01/calendar.1012/b25488/toc.htm

 

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa564690(EXCHG.80).aspx

 

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa564509(EXCHG.80).aspx

 

Everywhere,
folks are dancing around solving this problem. Bob is Right, we need to be
based on ICALENDAR, but what does this mean?

 

I
have gotten several suggestions for shims, or embedding XSLT in WS-*, or…
but I get no answers, only chewing gum and bailing wire. ICALENDAR allows all
sorts of schedules, ranging from single events to 3rd Tuesday of the
month, even exceptions for months that have a 5th Tuesday. It also
understands time zones, while enabling you to schedule a single  event
that will occur at 8:30 AM local time at every office around the world. It is
reasonably flexible and complete. On the other side, we have ad hoc formats
that might have a beginning time and a duration only. BPEL does not have,
AFAIK, any good way to handle the repeating formats, the indefinite formats,
etc. I have found no actual standard that is anything like it in XML. I have
even had some feelers out to W3C folks and the silence is, well, silent.

 

http://www.newdaedalus.com/articles/2008/10/3/when-do-you-want-that.html

 

We
all know the natural and easy use case for oBIX that looks like “Conference
room scheduled for 17 people at 3:00, tell building systems to establish
temperature/humidity/warm up equipment by 3:00. Ventilation adequate for 17
people and continue to do so for the full hour”. 

 

Grid-based
Demand/Response *could* work on
BPEL or something like BPEL, but customers are not necessarily buying in to
these transactions. It seems somehow less elegant.

 

Exchange
or Work Orders (OSCRE) and exchange of Medical Appointments could use something
like this.

 

Emergency
response, especially predictions of storm events could benefit from this. I can
imagine a variant of HAVE that predicts availability tomorrow based upon
Maintenance Schedules.

 

Green
Grid scenarios are easy to imagine. Would transformer reliability estimates be
sent with maintenance schedules for reduced capacity?

 

Etc.

 

Many
of these areas of work, these domains, do share information about planned
events with each other, but not as a direct control process. 

 

Alongside
the scheduling moment, there is the question of payload…

 

There
are only two real options.

 

1)           
ICALENDAR is a full fledged XML data type, and so can get passed in its current
format

2)           
ICALENDAR must have a standard transformation, referenced by all.

 

The
first has a certain simplicity to it, and one could imagine easily scraping
some sort of existing Calendar to add some building commands and go, as a shim.

 

The
second feels like a better final solution, but it has another question. 

 

A)          
Is the contract/behavior/event inside or alongside the ICAL. Just as an event
now is inside the Schedule, I could imagine an [oBIX Contract] inside a event. 

B)           
Does the event have a reference to an external contract, an internal link? One
could imagine invoking one process to occur at 7 times, by re-using the link
ID. In the grid-aware scenario, we could imagine 7 energy usage scenarios,
spead over multiple schedules, and bidding alternative const proposals…

C)           
Calendar and other contract exist alongside each other inside some higher-order
envelope.

 

Am
I missing something?

 

tc

 

"There
are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the
root." -- David Thoreau

 

  
  
Toby Considine

  
Chair, OASIS oBIX TC

  Facilities Technology Office

University of North Carolina

Chapel Hill, NC

  
  
  
  

  
  
  
Email: Toby.Considine@ unc.edu

  Phone: (919)962-9073 

  
http://www.oasis-open.org 

  http://www.NewDaedalus.com