Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!dptg!rutgers!uwm.edu!lll-winken!ncis.tis.llnl.gov!com.qz.se!JPALME From: JPALME@com.qz.se Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso.x400 Subject: Notes from the Bari meeting of the ISO messaging group Message-ID: <456080@QZCOM> Date: 17 Oct 89 16:05:00 GMT Sender: root@ncis.tis.llnl.gov Distribution: inet Organization: The Internet Lines: 199 Approved: post-x400@tis.llnl.gov bcc: "MHS (CCITT) Standardization" , iso-messaging-group@RUTHERFORD.AC.UK Notes from the Bari meeting of the ISO messaging group ====================================================== The ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 18/WG 4/Special working group on messaging has just held a meeting in Bari in Italy between October 2 and October 6, 1989. Here are my personal notes from the meeting. CCITT cooperation ----------------- There are two different international organisations who develop messaging standards, CCITT and ISO. This is of course not very good. The ISO group has therefore proposed to CCITT that we should hold joint meetings with the technical group developing messaging standards in ISO and in CCITT, in order to ensure that the ISO and CCITT standards will be as similar as possible. This proposal has not been accepted by CCITT. We therefore now proposed an alternative, to hold co-located meetings, with common groups for the technical work on those issues where both organisations agree on this, but with separate plenary meetings at the start and end of the meeting. These separate plenaries should be held in sequence, not concurrently, to allow liaison officers from one of the organisations to participate in the plenary meeting of the other organisation. We wrote a letter to CCITT, where we tried to be as nice and friendly as we could, in the hope that CCITT will recognize our good will and accept joint or co-located meetings. Resolution of defects --------------------- We discussed a small number of defect reports on IS 10021 (the ISO name for the X.400 recommendation). No final decision was taken on them, since this must be in cooperation with CCITT, and we do not yet know if CCITT will accept co-located meetings with ISO or not. Since defect resolution must be done in cooperation with CCITT, this will be much easier if CCITT accepts co-located meetings. Enhancements to IS 10021 (X.400) -------------------------------- The 1988 version of IS 10021 (X.400) has a built-in extension facility, making it easy to add extensions without causing problems for implementations without these extensions. We decided to add a new message heading field, using this extension mechanism. This field is called "auto-submitted mark", and indicates whether a message was produced by, or under supervision of, a human, or automatically bu a machine. This field is useful, since you can avoid two machines interminably sending messages back and forward to each other in an infinte loop. There are also other uses of this heading field. MHS Routing and Management -------------------------- I did not participate in the subgroup on this, so I cannot report in detail. The group is working on use of the directory system to store information about how you can reach he recipient of messages. MTA-s are expected to use the directory system to decide where to forward messages they get. They note that O/R-names are allocated by a hierarchical structure of naming authorities. First, country name is allocated by IS 3166 and X.121. Then, ADMD- and PRMD-names are allocated nationally. ORG names are sometimes allocated nationally, sometimes by ADMD and PRMD owners. All other name attributes are allocated within ADMD-s, PRMD-s or ORG-s. Thus, a distributed directory structure can be created based on this hierarchical structure of naming authorities, and can contain as attributes the routing information. Corresponding structures as described above for mnemonic O/R-names can be built for Numeric and Postal O/R-addresses. The group discussed how this will work in special cases, like a PRMD connected to two different ADMD-s in a country, possibly with different PRMD name in relation to each ADMD. The group wrote a liaison letter to SC 21 (the ISO standards group which is responsible for the Directory System) telling them their needs for use of the directory system. Message Store Enhancements -------------------------- The 1988 version of X.400 contains a facility called the Message Store. It is a facility for storing messages for a particular user, and giving the user some control on when to download messages to his workstation. ISO is working on enhancing the Message Store, so that it can be a fully qualified personal message store, with folders, automatic filtering and sorting of incoming messages etc. Group communication ------------------- By group communication is meant support for communication within groups of people. ISO has identified about 50 different functions in group communication systems, from basic computer conference systems, to advanced systems with support for voting, joint editing etc. At the Bari meeting we discussed the AMIGO model for group communication and different system architectures. We intentionally avoided any limiting decisions, because we prefer to make these together with CCITT, but tried to clarify the consequences of different solutions. The main points of discussion at this meeting was the architectural model and data model. The architectural model can contain a Group Communication Service Agent (GCCA) which indirectly makes use of other services like MTS, the Directory System and the Document Filing and Retrieval System (DFR). Another alternative is that the Group Communication User Agents (GCUA) directly make use of these supportive services. We also discussed the possibillities of defining group communication in classes, each class being a subset of the next higher class. This would allow easy implementation of the most basic group communication services, with Class 0 equal to MHS/88 without any changes, since also MSH/88 does contain some group communication support through distribution lists. Use of messaging for EDI ------------------------ We did nothing on this subject at the Bari meeting. Representation of O/R addresses for human exchange -------------------------------------------------- There is a need for a standardised format for writing the electronic mail address, the so-called O/R-address, on business cards, letter heads etc. in the same way as postal addresses and telephone numbers. This is a very controversial area, because some solutions which are easy to handle for humans require that the user interface of message systems are capable of inputting a concise format of the O/R-address. And many people are against all standards which will influence the user interface of message systems. The main controversy was between my standpoint, that we should not totally preclude solutions which do mean some limited requirements on the user interface, and the Canadian standpoint, that we should not even investigate and test such solutions. A psychological test will be performed in Sweden to compare three different alterntives for writing an O/R-name. Here is an example of an O/R-name in the three formats: ***** Full format: Country = SE ADMD = TEDE PRMD = QZ Organisation = Stockholm University Organisational Unit = DSV Given name = Jacob Surname = Palme ***** RARE format: C=SE;ADMD=TEDE;PRMD=QZ;O=Stockholm University;OU=DSV;GN=Jacob;SN=Palme Note: If the RARE format is to be used, there is some discussion on whether the character between label and value should be ":" or "=". We thought that "=" would be better, since otherwise users might find difficulty in distinguishing between the rather similar characters ":" and ";". An alternative is also to use "]" instead of ";" as separator, but this is not good, sice "]" is a nationally defined character in the IA5 (ISO 646, "ASCII") character set. ***** Concise format: /Jacob/Palme//DSV/Stockholm University//QZ/TEDE/SE On this controversial issue, Canada wanted to ask ISO member organisations whether the work in this area should be allowed to study solutions which may mean certain requirements on the user interface of message systems, while I (representing Sweden) did not want to put this question to ISO member organisations until standards work and investigations had reach the so-called DP (Draft Proposal) stage. A compromise solution was reached, in which ISO member organisations were told of the conflict, but also told that this choice requires careful study, and are then given the option to give their opinions on this matter if they so wish. Next meeting ------------ We hope that our next meeting will be together with CCITT, probably in January or February 1990. If this is not possible, ISO will meet in Britain for a separate meeting with the ISO messaging group.