NCITS V2b Status Report

1. At the October plenary, in the V2b breakout, it was decided that V2b will focus upon standards for Web-based solutions for the present. Standards for wider Internet-based solutions can grow out of the narrower focus as a basis.Ê The approach will thus be built around W3C Recommendations for HTTP and CC/PP.Ê However, these Recommendations should not be adopted directly as part of the V2 standard, but should be offered as guidance for structure and behavior.Ê The reason for this is to permit variety in implementation and not restrict the operation to the Internet.Ê Other W3C Recommendations will include those for XHTML, XML, XSL and XSLT.Ê Thus, the V2 standard should be generic but permit interpretation as W3C-based for implementers who require that approach.

2. Recognizing that there will be core requirements common to both V2a and V2b, V2b is assisting V2a in deriving these requirements and in defining the scope of V2a.Ê At present, there are not enough participants in V2b to fully define scope and requirements for V2b.

3. A 4-box model representing the entities and operations necessary to carry out the activities in a V2b system will be used to derive technical requirements.Ê This was discussed at the October Plenary and further described in contributions.

4. Approach for Requirements and Scope

1. Decide equipment to be involved.Ê Initially, this will be based upon the conventional client-server model already in use.Ê On the user side, this may entail some aspects of V2a, when the user has an accessor external to the primary system.Ê Initial scope should probably not include special devices like WAP devices or PDAs, nor the ubiquitous computing environments, because of the stringent limitations these place on the interface descriptions and modifications.Ê However, these must be factored into the thinking so that future work will not be constrained.

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2. Model the operations based upon the 4-box model.Ê This will later derive the technical behavior requirements of the AIAP

3. Model the information to be exchanged/conveyed.Ê This will later derive the structural requirements for AIAP.Ê This will include both the information needed to realize the technical behavior of AIAP and the information necessary to select or modify a user interface.Ê In previous discussions in V2a it has become clear that certain requirements may be imposed by the nature of the needs we are trying to address, e.g., the ability to provide text versions of all commands and data.Ê Modeling of such information and its explicit delineation in the protocol structure and operation must also be undertaken

The modeling describe above is at a gross level and should include only the kinds of information and operations required.

5. Tasks÷the following tasks need to be accomplished

aÊ Definition of what V2b systems ãareä.Ê At present there is only a cursory high level idea of what they are.Ê This needs to be refined.

bÊ Agreement with V2a on common core requirements

c. Scope and Requirements