CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_

Reported by Chris Weider/Bunyip Information Systems

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


Agenda

   o Approve Minutes
   o Status of the Vision Document
   o Status of the Transponder Document
   o Z39.50 over TCP/IP
   o Integrated Information Architecture Work
   o HTTP Status
   o IAB Architecture Workshop
   o Charter Revision


Status of the Vision and Transponder Documents

A paragraph stating that this was not the official view of the working
group was added to both documents.  They are now free to move to RFC
status.


Z39.50 over TCP/IP

There were no comments on the Z39.50 document.  It now needs to be moved
to Informational RFC status.


Integrated Information Architecture Work

Mitra gave a report on the information architecture work that he, Karen
Sollins, Larry Masinter, Keith Moore, Chris Weider, and others have been
working on over the past four months.  The basic view is that a set of
functional modules required by all Internet information services will be
defined, and then the required functionality for those modules will be
developed.  The modules identified so far are:


   o Retrieval
   o Gateways
   o URN ! URC resolution
   o Update modules
   o Service location
   o Caching/replication
   o Security and authentication
   o Charging, payment, and accounting
   o Presentation
   o Search
   o Feature definitions or `dictionary'


More work will be done on this architecture, and it will be presented at
the IAB Architecture Workshop in October (see below).

Brief reports were solicited from attendees of the WWW meeting in Geneva
and the GopherCon in Minneapolis to determine if there was anything
which would affect the architectural discussions.  Tim Berners-Lee
mentioned that there was work in four areas which might have some
bearing:


   o Server technology:  NCSA is working on load handling and load
     sharing tools for WWW; this will need to be incorporated into the
     architecture.

   o New tools for navigation:  Spiders, which are automatic Web
     traversers, and new tools for indexing the Web.

   o HTML: HTML+ will contain additional features for table generation
     and for the specification of mathematical equations

   o Virtual Reality:  Several virtual reality researchers are pressing
     for HTML extensions to support the use of the Web in virtual
     reality.


Mitra gave the report for GopherCon.  The focus on future Gopher
development is to allow Gopher to easily serve large-scale collections
of data without having to rewrite the data extensively as one would have
to do with HTML. Gopher is also focusing on a more object-oriented data
model, to allow object overlays and `hot maps' in Gopher.  Gofer (with
an `f') is a protocol being developed outside the University of
Minnesota arena which is attempting to get more rapid incorporation of
desired features into the basic Gopher protocol.  They are focusing on
security features and on data updates via the protocol.  There is also a
new gopher-HTTP daemon, which is an HTTP server which uses Gopher data
structures.


IAB Architecture Workshop

Erik Huizer mentioned that the IAB was sponsoring an invitation-only
workshop to work on an integrated Internet information architecture.  A
request for white papers has already gone out to the IETF list and
several others, and Erik asked that IIIR solicit paragraphs on the work
in progress from communities outside the traditional IETF scope, and
that they develop a basic set of vocabulary definitions to enhance the
utility of the meeting.  Cecilia Preston volunteered to start work on
the vocabulary list which was developed during the meeting, and several
people have agreed to contact various organizations:


          Shamrock Coalition          Larry Masinter
          Document Enabled Network    Larry Masinter
          Lotus Notes                 Karen Sollins
          SIGIR                       Cliff Lynch
          EDI                         Chris Weider
          Digital Libraries '94       Cliff Lynch, Judith Grass
          Commerce Net                No volunteers
          CUPID                       No volunteers
          CORBA                       No volunteers
          NASA's EOS DIS              Kevin Gamiel


Solicitations should be made by 15 August.  The white papers from these
organizations should be submitted by 10 September.


Charter Revision

The charter has been rewritten to reflect IIIR's focus on architectural
issues; specific milestones have been installed for this work.