Interoperability Charter v2

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Contents

Introduction, including status of this document

This document contains the proposed text for the updated version 2 charter for the Interoperability Working Group. This updated charter will replace the version 1 charter that expires on Dec. 31, 2008. For more information, please refer to the following other important wiki pages:

This version 2 charter for the Interoperability Working Group is still under development and has not yet been approved by the OpenAjax Alliance Steering Committee. This charter is being developed collaboratively by the Members of OpenAjax Alliance for future review/approval by the Steering Committee, in accordance with the OpenAjax Alliance Development Process.

This wiki page should not be changed except via coordination with the Chair(s) (see below). The preferred approaches for feedback on this document are the Interoperability committee mailing list (interop@openajax.org), the public mailing list (public@openajax.org), or the discussion tab on this wiki page.

Rechartering timeline

The rechartering phone call for the Interoperability Working Group (formally known as the "Creation Review" phone call) occurred on:

  • Friday, Dec. 19, 2008, 10:30am PT, 1:30pm ET, 7:30pm Europe
  • US toll-free: 1-888-227-9220, Int'l: 719-785-4480, Passcode 871757

Minutes from that phone call:

Members will vote on the rechartering during the following time period:

  • Dec. 22, 2008 to Jan. 6, 2009

The rechartering voting page is at:

Assuming members approve, then Steering Committee voting on the rechartering will occur just after Member voting.

Initiating Member and Proposal Lead

The OpenAjax Alliance Development Process requires that the initiating Member identify its Proposal Lead:

  • Initiating Member: IBM
  • Proposal Lead: Jon Ferraiolo (jferrai(at)us.ibm.com)

Mission and scope

The Interoperability Working Group has responsibility for technical activities in the general area of Ajax interoperability covering the following areas:

  • Interoperability within the same Web application - ability to combine JavaScript components from multiple Ajax toolkits within the same Web application and have those components interact with each other.
  • Interoperability within a mashup application - ability to combine Ajax-powered mashup "widgets" (i.e., self-contained components) and have those components interact with each other, including the ability for untrusted 3rd party widgets to co-exist safely and securely in the same mashup with other components.
  • OpenAjax Registry - development and management of an industry-wide registry of Ajax libraries that contains a list of the JavaScript globals ("namespaces") and HTML markup (elements and attributes) that are allocated to and/or used by particular Ajax libraries.
  • OpenAjax Conformance - development and management of the rules around the OpenAjax Conformance trust brand, a set of conformance requirements that OpenAjax Alliance places on Ajax technologies, products, and applications. These requirements focus on a small number of simple but important aspects of Ajax usage, thereby providing the critical bits of Ajax interoperability that customers need, but in a manner that allows Ajax suppliers to continue to innovate and move forward with new technologies and products.
  • Best practices initiatives - Depending on industry interest, the Interoperability WG might work on various technical documents, testbeds and sample applications (e.g., acid tests) that support efforts around "OpenAjax Conformance" and any of the following:
    • Browsers
    • Ajax toolkits
    • Ajax applications
    • IDEs
    • Ajax server frameworks

The WG will produce Materials that are consistent with its mission and scope, including Specifications, other relevant technical documents, tests, and sample applications.

The WG will manage the Alliance's open source project at SourceForge that develops reference implementations of the Specifications produced by this WG, test suites and related utility software (such as automated build and test scripts).

The WG will be responsible for addressing interoperability issues associated with all Ajax-enabled devices. As such, its responsibilities goes beyond desktop computers into mobile devices and other computing platforms.

Work plan

Deliverables

OpenAjax Hub version 1.1 (2.0)

The initial deliverable for this WG are the detailed Specification, open source reference implementation, tests, and other associated relevant materials around a second major release of the OpenAjax Hub, which at the time of this charter is labelled "OpenAjax Hub 1.1", but which will likely be renamed to "OpenAjax Hub 2.0" before finalization and approval. For the purposes of this document, this technology will be referred to as "Hub 1.1".

Hub 1.1 will be upwardly compatible with Hub 1.0 and will add features that enable secure mashups, where individual mashup widgets are isolated into sandboxes (e.g., leveraging IFRAMEs), and where Hub 1.1 provides secure cross-widget messaging facilities (e.g., taking advantage of HTML5 postMessage and/or window.location fragment identifiers). The architecture of Hub 1.1 will be independent of any particular container technologies (e.g., IFRAMEs) and any particular messaging technologies (e.g., HTML5 postMessage) to allow use of different container approaches and different messaging approaches.

Future versions of the OpenAjax Hub

If there is industry demand for updates to Hub 1.1, and these updates are consistent with the existing charter and can be accomplished within the charter period, then this Working Group may choose to develop one or more subsequent releases of the OpenAjax Hub.

This charter allows for the Working Group to add new features to the Hub relating to a Communications Hub, a Security Hub, a Data Hub, or other similar mediation logic, without rechartering the Working Group, so long as those features are focused on interoperability and integration of multiple Ajax toolkits where the Hub performs a dispatching role. On the other hand, if new features are proposed that go beyond this interoperability scope, a new or revised charter will be necessary.

Standardization of common event names and payloads for those events

The WG might produce Material, possibly in the form of Specifications, that define the technical details around standardization of certain commonly used event topics (potentially both the event name and payload) and relevant best practices (e.g, recommended approaches for how to name events) to promote interoperability in mashup scenarios.

If standard events are defined by this WG, those events will be relevant to the technologies developed within this WG and appropriate to the mission and scope of this WG. One example of a standarized event that might be developed within this WG would be events relating to drag-and-drop within mashup scenarios.

It is expected that other OpenAjax Alliance working groups and other organizations, including other industry groups, will define event names and event payload standards building on the foundation work produced by this WG.

OpenAjax Registry

This WG will produce Specifications, other related Material, open source reference implementations, test suites, and related utility source code in order to deliver to the industry an OpenAjax Registry, which is an industry-wide registry of Ajax libraries that contains a list of the JavaScript globals ("namespaces") and HTML markup (elements and attributes) that are allocated to and/or used by particular Ajax libraries.

The initial release or subsequent releases of the Registry might be extended to address other industry interoperability requirements, such as including a list of mashup messaging topics and payloads.

If there is industry demand for updates to OpenAjax Registry, and these updates are consistent with the existing charter and can be accomplished within the charter period, then this Working Group may choose to develop one or more subsequent releases of the OpenAjax Registry.

OpenAjax Conformance

This WG will produce Specifications, other related Material, open source reference implementations, test suites, and related utility source code in order to deliver to the industry an approved definition of OpenAjax Conformance, which is a a set of conformance requirements that OpenAjax Alliance places on Ajax technologies, products, and applications. These requirements focus on a small number of simple but important aspects of Ajax usage, thereby providing the critical bits of Ajax interoperability that customers need, but in a manner that allows Ajax suppliers to continue to innovate and move forward with new technologies and products.

If there is industry demand for updates to OpenAjax Conformance, and these updates are consistent with the existing charter and can be accomplished within the charter period, then this Working Group may choose to develop one or more subsequent releases of the OpenAjax Conformance.

OpenAjax Best Practices

This WG may choose to produce produce Material, possibly in the form of Specifications, that define the technical details around the official definition of OpenAjax Alliance's Best Practices.

Coordination with other OpenAjax Alliance committee

This WG will coordinate with other activities at OpenAjax Alliance as follows:

  • Gadgets TF (or future WG) - Mashup integration issues, particularly around the ability to reuse Ajax library widgets within mashup scenarios and standardized topic names
  • IDE WG - IDE issues that overlap with Ajax library runtime scenarios
  • Security Task Force (or future WG) - IDE integration issues that overlap with Ajax security issues
  • Mobile Task Force (or future WG) - IDE integration issues that overlap with Mobile Ajax issues

If new OpenAjax activities are started during the duration of this WG, the WG will determine what coordination activities are required with the new activities.

Schedule

Duration

This WG will be chartered to run until Dec. 31, 2009.

Revisions to this charter might shorten or extend the duration of this WG.

Milestones

The following milestones represent expected delivery dates, but the WG can use judgment to update delivery dates using its own discretion.

  • It is expected that a feature-complete version of the Hub 1.1 specifications and stable and complete version of the open source reference implementation will be available in January 2009.
  • It is expected that a revised and final feature-complete draft Hub 1.1 specification will be available by the end of February 2009.
  • It is expected that an approved Hub 1.1 specification will be available by the end of March 2009.
  • Finalization and completion of OpenAjax Registry and OpenAjax Conformance will be completed as time allows.

Success and completion criteria

This WG can consider its efforts around Hub 1.1 to be successful if multiple mashup products, including commercial products, include support for Hub 1.1.

Relationship to other forums

  • Whenever possible, Specifications should reference industry-accepted relevant Ajax industry standards (de jure and de facto) rather than develop conflicting new features or authoring redundant feature definitions
  • Any mobile efforts should take into account coordination with the W3C's Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) and OMA.

Communications mechanisms

Email

Email will occur on interop@openajax.org. This email list will be read-only to people who are not representatives of Members of OpenAjax Alliance. Public discussion will occur on public@openajax.org.

Phone

Normally, there will be weekly phone calls, but phone calls may be added or cancelled at the discretion of the chair.

IRC

The IRC channel for this WG is: irc.freenode.net, #oaa-interop

Chair, expected membership, and operational rules

Jon Ferraiolo is the chair for this WG. It is expected that the people who are currently involved in the existing Interoperability Committee will participate in this WG. There will be a consensus decision process managed by the chair that aligns with common practice in Web standards (e.g., W3C consensus process) and open source activities (e.g., Apache voting process), where a particular decision process used to resolve a particular issue is chosen by the chair based on appropriateness to the given circumstance. This WG produces recommendations to the Membership and Steering Committee about activities and material to be published, in accordance with process defined by the OpenAjax Alliance Members Agreement and OpenAjax Alliance Development Process.

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