CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_
Reported by Dave Crocker/Silicon Graphics
Minutes of the Electronic Data Interchange Working Group (EDI)
This group met as a BOF in Seattle.
The meeting was the first face-to-face gathering of a group that had
been conducting e-mail discussion for several months and was held to:
o Introduce IETF participants to the EDI domain of discourse,
o Review work from the mailing list,
o Assess continued IETF interest in working in this domain and the
priorities by which the mailing list has been functioning, and
o Initiate new work.
In particular, the MIME content type definitions were reviewed, and a
preliminary discussion about the EDI-over-Internet Usage document was
conducted. Attendance was substantially higher than expected (42
people) for a topic thought rather arcane to the IETF. A content-type
naming contest was initiated, and completed the following day. There
was a clear consensus for continuing this work as a formally chartered
working group.
Introduce IETF Participants to the EDI Domain of Discourse
We had an extensive discussion about EDI background and some about
Internet background. A bit of the mailing list history was reviewed, in
terms of its representing what I called an ``aculturation process.''
This was a polite way of describing the head-butting and name-calling
which resulted from many participants having plenty of experience to
suggest that they held the correct view of how to do things when, in
fact, we are trying to merge two, quite different ways of doing things
and needed to find a basis for collaboration and compromise. Hence, my
own assessment of the recent explanation for the complete list
inactivity was that we were all catching our breath. (As well as
waiting for me to produce the revised draft specification.)
Review Work from the Mailing List
We had previously identified four work items that are reasonable for
near-term work, but agreed to defer the second two. Hence, our work is
to:
1. Define MIME content types for carriage of EDI
2. Develop a ``usage'' document to assist the EDI community in
understanding reasonable ways of doing EDI over the Internet
The two items deferred for effort by a later working group (under the
belief that work is best done serially):
3. Specification of EDI ``routing'' information (a la X.435)
4. Specification of mappings between Internet-based and X-400 based
EDI
Assess Continued IETF Interest
Both the attendance and the participation in the BOF, as well as the
extensive e-mail list history serve as a clear indication that this area
is interesting and relevant to the IETF community and that there is
productive work that is feasible within a reasonable timeframe.
Initiate New Work
We looked briefly over a new draft of the MIME-over-Internet document,
being released as an Internet-Draft in parallel with these minutes. The
three MIME content types it defines are EDI-X12, EDIFACT, and EDI-other.
It was felt by the group that the last term lacked a certain je ne sai
quois and should be replaced by a better term. This latter type is
intended as a generic tag for all non-X12 and non-edifact which may be
sent between trading partners having prior agreement. As an expedient,
a contest was declared, for one day, soliciting suggested alternative
names. The winning entry was EDI-consent.
Initial discussion about the scope and structure of the usage document
was begun, to be carried forward to the list. The presentation slide
used to introduce this discussion follows the minutes.
Dick Brooks raised a concern about the ability of MIME to carry binary
EDI data. This has been a repeated concern on the EDI list, so it is
worth mentioning, again, that MIME has a standard solution to the
requirement, called Content-Transfer-Encoding:bin64, which converts the
binary data into a form that can be carried over text-only links (i.e.,
the usual e-mail carriage mechanisms).
Dick also solicited participation in a pilot project to field and test
EDI over the Internet using the draft specification. This should be
pursued over the IETF-EDI mailing list. Since the IETF only
standardizes that which has been implemented, tested and used, such a
pilot is an essential step along the standards path.
Attendees
Kevin Altis altis@ibeam.intel.com
Perkins Bass bass@eskimo.com
Scott Bradner sob@harvard.edu
Lloyd Brodsky lbrodsky@rocksolid.com
Dick Brooks d.brooks@ieee.org
Rong Chang rong@watson.ibm.com
David Crocker dcrocker@mordor.stanford.edu
Dante Delucia dante@usc.edu
Cheri Dowell cdowell@atlas.arc.nasa.gov
Richard Everman reverman@ka.reg.uci.edu
Erik Fair fair@apple.com
Roger Fajman raf@cu.nih.gov
Tina Feick feick@bnamf.blackwell.com
Louis Fernandez lff@sequent.com
Ned Freed ned@innosoft.com
Shawn Gillam shawn@timonware.com
Terry Gray gray@cac.washington.edu
Jill Hanson jhanson@wsipc.wednet.edu
Barbara Jennings bjjenni@sandia.gov
John Klensin Klensin@infoods.unu.edu
Andrew Knutsen andrewk@sco.com
Paul Lambert paul_lambert@email.mot.com
Barry Leiner leiner@nsipo.nasa.gov
Edward Levinson levinson@pica.army.mil
Laura McCarty lmccarty@pmel.noaa.gov
Michael McLay mclay@eeel.nist.gov
Mark Needleman mhn@stubbs.ucop.edu
Michael O'Dell mo@uunet.uu.net
Tim O'Reilly tim@ora.com
Brad Parker brad@fcr.com
Manny Pasetes ekp@utu.prememos.com
Les Pennington les@cac.washington.edu
Karen Petraska-Veum karen.veum@gsfc.nasa.gov
Francois Robitaille francois.robitaille@crim.ca
Jim Romaguera romaguera@netconsult.ch
Michael Sorsen c02420MS@wuvmd.wustl.edu
Einar Stefferud stef@nma.com
Peter Sylvester peter.sylvester@inria.fr
Phil Trubey ptrubey@netcom.com
John Veizades veizades@wco.ftp.com