CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_

Reported by Kevin Gamiel/MCNC - CNIDR

Minutes of the Integration of Internet Information Resources Working
Group (IIIR)


Agenda

   o Approval of Minutes
   o Agenda Revisions
   o Status of Drafts
   o Integrated Information Architecture Work
   o IAB Retreat Report
   o IAFA into IIIR
   o CNI NIDR Paper Discussion
   o Gordon Irlam Architecture Ideas
   o HTTP BOF
   o Charter Revisions


Summary

There were approximately one hundred participants, half of which
indicated they were newcomers.  Following a brief introduction to IIIR,
Chris Weider discussed the current status of current IIIR documents.
``Z39.50 Over TCP/IP'' by Cliff Lynch, ``A Vision of an Integrated
Internet'' by Chris Weider and Peter Deutsch as well as ``Resource
Transponders'' by Chris Weider have all been approved and were sent to
the RFC Editor as Informational RFCs following the last IETF meeting in
Toronto.  They are predicted to be published by the end of the calendar
year by the RFC Editor.

An informal report on the IAB workshop that took place in the Washington
DC area in the fall was presented in three sections.  ``Caching and
Replication'' by Tim Berners-Lee and Mike Schwartz, ``Security and
Authentication'' by Karen Sollins and ``Searching'' by Chris Weider.

The members of the retreat broke down the architectural problems as they
saw them into several general categories.  There will be a formal white
paper describing the outcome of the retreat published in early spring
and will be presented to the IIIR mailing list.  Tim Berners-Lee listed
the requirements established by the ``Caching and Replication'' group as
quality of service, e.g.  synchronization and consistency, central
management capable, optimized, adaptive, replicate executable objects
and hooks for billing, accounting and logging.

Karen presented a graphical model of a security and authentication
subsystem consisting in part of an object manager, caching services,
indexing services and others.  The full IAB report will cover more
details on the security and authentication issues as well as the
searching issues.

Cliff Lynch discussed a paper on NIDR that he, Cecilia Preston, Craig
Summerhill and Avra Michelson are working on as part of a CNI
initiative.  The paper will focus on historical perspectives concerning
information discovery and retrieval but will spend much focus on new
trends and in particular, the use of meta-data in modern information
systems.  A first draft of this document is due at the spring CNI
meeting.

Gordon Irlam gave a presentation on his vision of an Internet
information architecture.

Simon Spero reminded the group of the first HTTP BOF to be held within
the IETF. HTTP was first discussed, as was HTML, in the IIIR forum.

The remaining time was spent discussing the future of the IIIR Working
Group.  Consensus was reached that the working group should continue but
with perhaps a more general scope than traditional working groups.
Hence, the charter is being rewritten by the chairs and area directors
to reflect this consensus.