2008-08-26

Meeting Information

Attending: Toby Vandemark, Chair; Skip Bartolanzo, Madhuri Chinnakkagari, Susan Cummings, James Fiore, Allen Gubert, Jeanette Harmon, Tarang Shah, Valerie Smothers

Agenda Items

1. Review minutes of last meeting

The minutes were approved.

2. Review of schema and specification updates

Toby asked Valerie to review the schema and specification changes. Valerie summarized that the date elements had changed to the XML dateTime data type, which specifies both date and time. The group accepted the changes.

3. Ansi status

Toby asked Valerie to summarize our ANSI status. Valerie explained that the Activity Report Announcement was published by ANSI on August 8. There is a 30 day public review which will end September 8. Following that, the working group can send the specification to the standards committee for final comment and balloting whenever they think it is ready.  It would be good to have implementer feedback by then to make sure that the standard is acceptable. Toby stated that the group would reassess the standard for the next call on Sep 16. If it looks fine, they will make a decision then. Implementers should have feedback by then. Barring any issues, we will move forward.

4. Implementers update

Allen from the ABP commented that they have finally connected with the AAP. Had issues related to use of secure certificates in .net rel. ABP helped AAP resolve those issues. They are now supposed to be testing. They were hoping to speak with Scott on the call. They will get in touch with him the end of this week. Some ABP database changes have been made; there will need to be changes to the web services to accommodate those database changes. Skip commented that they have not made the date time data type change. He doesn't know at what point they will update to the new schema. They have web services up and running. The member service is fully working. They are ironing out database issues with the Activity Report.

Valerie asked if they had any lessons learned that should be included in the implementation guidelines. Allen replied that each group must understand how to handle a secure certificate in their environment - how it gets on their server, how it interacts with whoever provides the service. Skip commented that all along the way there were problems communicating because of the difference in tools; it seemed like the tools were not supporting what they needed. He recommended keeping things as simple as possible, what both sides can support. They are still wondering what trouble they may run into with the next client. They have deployed with java and .net; it's unclear what the next client will be. Some clients may not be able to develop a web service, so they may need another mechanism for submission. Clients are at different levels of technical skills.

Toby asked about non-web service deployments. Tarang replied that they are using at the schema to transfer data and then use an internal web service. The validation is done with a schema that they adapted. They use http to post to the server and use SSL for security.

Valerie and James explained that ABMS accepts the XML file uploads along with excel file uploads. Toby asked if abp was working with them. Madhuri commented that ABP sends an excel file to ABMS.

5. Open discussion

Valerie asked Skip a few questions related to the implementation guidelines.

1.       Is lom metadata used for MoC activities?
Skip commented that there is no need for the metadata; they have it commented out, since some types are not supported by JAX rpc. Until they have Jax ws available, they cannot use lom in a web service.

2.       What dates does AAP send you?
Skip and Allen clarified that AAP sends Start and Complete dates only. Those are required.

3.       Is there a sample XML file you could send to show how activity reports can be used for MoC? Fake name information is fine.
Skip will send an example next week.

The next call is September 16 at 2 PM eastern.

Decisions

The group will reassess sending the specification to the standards committee on the next call.

Action Items

• Skip will send a sample MoC Activity Report XML file for inclusion in the implementation guidelines.
• Valerie will update the implementation guidelines based on the group discussion.