Minutes Middleware Meeting 14 April 99
=======================================

Present: K. Kostro, A. Risso, V. Baggiolini
Excused: F. Di Maio, M. Vanden Eynden

Agenda
======
- Feedback on Whitepaper
- Discuss meeting of yesterday with Frederic Bouchet from Compaq
- AOB

Whitepaper Feedback
===================

The meeting started with a Kris asking for feedback on the draft 
whitepaper. After some feedback had been given, the discussion turned 
away from the contents of the whitepaper. Instead, the question was 
raised, how we could motivate the exclusion of some of the available 
middleware families.

It was stated that, according to the milestone plan, the whitepaper shall 
be published (T2) only once the preliminary requirements and constraints 
have been captured (R2). [R2 has the goal to produce requirements 
that allow to restrict the choice of the middleware to a small number of 
families only]. We noticed that R2 is already 2 weeks late. While many of 
the requirements can be extracted from the current version of the URD, 
others (namely scalability, availability, manageability) had not yet been 
discussed. The meeting therefore turned towards requirements gathering. 

Requirements Gathering
======================

The following requirement areas were touched:
- Requirements for the smooth integration of existing FE software: Alex 
  will write a few lines about this
- Scalability: Alex and Kris will provide figures for the number of 
  front-ends, devices, properties
- Traffic requirements: Alex will provide (together with Franck) figures 
  about the number of interactions per time unit, the amount of data 
  transferred, burstiness of this data in the current PS system. 
  Projections of these figures shall be made when subscription 
  mechanisms are available.
- Memory on FE available for middleware infrastructure
- Availability and fault tolerance features
- Management and Troubleshooting: functionality needed to track down 
  problems in middleware communication: Alex and Franck will, together 
  with Nicolas provide a list of requirements; Vito will interview 
  Alastair and Pedro.
- Subscription to groups of properties

All of these issues were discussed, and initial requirements were 
gathered, that will be written down by Vito. However, the issues have to 
be enriched. It was proposed  that each of us tries to list up 
requirements and send them by mail to the others. 

Involvement of F. Bouchet
=========================

We agreed that it would be a good idea to involve F. Bouchet in a 
practical Use Case Modeling Training session with the core team. The goal 
would be to give us practical training on how Use Cases are used, so that 
we can apply this technique with the soft and client teams. We have to 
find, however, a number of potential use-case topics that can be treated 
with F. Bouchet. The best data would be around the 26th of April, because 
Alex and F. Bouchet are on holiday afterwards.

We furthermore noticed that the definition of a Glossary (as mentioned by 
F. Bouchet) would be very beneficial for our work. One of the first terms 
to standardize would be "Middleware" itself...

AOB
===

The work of Trofimov with CORBA was brought up. He has installed OmniORB, 
but this product does not seem to have a Java interface (yet?). Kris will 
investigate on that. He will also coordinate interoperability between 
OmniORB and Visibroker, the tool Dominik uses.

Actions:
========
- Provide requirements for the smooth integration of existing PS FE 
  software: Alex
- Provide scalability figures: Alex, Kris
- Provide figures about PS traffic requirements. Alex + Franck
- Provide a list of requirements for Management and Troubleshooting: 
  Alex + Franck (with Nicolas); Vito (with Alastair + Pedro)
- Investigate on existence of a Java interface for OmniORB and 
  coordinate interoperability testing: Kris
- List up the requirements found during this meeting: Vito
- List up further requirements (for R2): All

Comments to: Vito.Baggiolini@cern.ch