2007 Process Summary.Fm7

Home , ISO 9660, Office Open XML, XML Metadata Interchange

IT Standards - Politics and Practicalities

Andrew Watson VP & Technical Director, OMG [email protected]

Why Standards? • Standardisation vital in modern IT - Once (c. 1960) everything could be bought from one source - Today “manufacturers” are mostly system integrators - “Closed” Powerbook G4 has Motorola CPU, Fujitsu RAM, Matshita CD/DVD, Hitachi hard disk, CSR Bluetooth, Broadcom 802.11g, V.24 modem by ?, Ethernet chip by ? - End-user also integrator (Ethernet, Nubus, PC-card, USB ...) • Standards define structure & behaviour of interfaces - Allow third parties to build systems - (Should) provide maximum latitude on implementation

Introducing OMG • Computer industry forum for creating open integration standards - UML, SysML, BPMN and related modelling specifications - CORBA integration platform & many related specifications • An industrial consortium with vendor and user members - Implementation must be available from OMG member • Specifications freely available to all - Visit http://www.omg.org • Decisions taken by members

Worldwide Membership 88 Solutions Daimler HP NEC SAP Adaptive Deere & Co. Hitachi NIST SAS Institute Adobe DoCoMo IBM Nokia Siemens Alcatel EBI IDS Scheer Northrop Sparx Systms Artisan EDS IONA OIS SWIFT BAE Systems EFF K’dy Carter Oracle Telelogic BEA Systems Eurocontrol Lockheed OSD Thales Boeing EuroSTEP Lombardi Penn Nat’l Toshiba Borland Fujitsu MEGA Promia TCS CA GCHQ Mentor G’ics PrismTech Unisys Capgemini G. Dynamics MITRE Raytheon US Nat. Arch. Credit Suisse Gnome Fndn. Motorola Red Hat VHA CSC HDMA NASA Rockwell VISA

Similar organisations (1) • Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) - Publishes “RFCs” (standards) for the internet - IPv4, IPv6, TCP, EGP, BGP, RIP, HTTP, SMTP, FTP ... - Run by Internet Architecture Board (IAB) - Part of US Govt. until early 90s, now under Internet Society • World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) - Makes “recommendations” (standards) for the web - HTML, CSS, XML, XML Schema, SOAP, SVG, XSLT ... - 16 international offices, founded by Tim Berners-Lee

Similar organisations (2) • Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) - Makes standards for information representation - DocBook, DITA, OpenDocument, DCML, LegalXML, BPEL ... - Started as SGML Open in ‘93, became XML-focussed in ‘98 • The Open Group - Owns UNIX trademark, does certification programmes - TOGAF, X Windows, Motif, POSIX, DCE, LDAP, - Merger of Open Software Foundation and X/Open in 1996 - OSF set up in 1988 by Unix vendors, created OSF/1

Similar organisations (3) • ECMA International - Formerly European Computer Manufacturers’ Association - CD-ROM (became ISO 9660), C#, C++/CLI, ECMAScript (JavaScript), Microsoft Office Open XML - Sun submitted, and then withdrew Java - More than 2/3 of ECMA standards went on to become international standards

• A host of others, more or less specialised - IEEE, USB Implementers Forum, InterNational Committee on Information Technology Standards (INCITS) - SCSI ......

De-jure standards • Individual counties have national standards bodies - typically independent but “recognised” by government - British Standards Institute (BSI) - Deutsches Institut für Normung (DIN) - American National Standards Institute (ANSI) • National bodies make own standards, represent their countries at international standards bodies: - International Organization for Standardization (ISO) - International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) - International Telecommunications Union (ITU-T)

De-jure vs. de-facto • De-jure standards carry weight - Governments & often demand de-jure stds compliance - Usually slow to create, lots of committee work • De-facto standards are “what everyone uses” - MS Word format, x86 instruction set, VGA, PDF, Javascript - Usually initially owned by one company, sometimes handed over to (more-or-less) independent organisations

• Standards consortia seek a happy medium - Fast (-ish), widely accepted, but not owned by one company - Anti-trust issues

Intellectual Property & Politics • Closed standards exist, but most prefer “Open” ... - “Freely” obtain documentation (Buy? Sign licence?) - “Freely” implement (Patents? If so, licencing terms?) - “Freely” sell/give away implementations - “Freely” modify & circulate original standard (usually not) • Publisher usually retains copyright on document - US DMCA made it possible to copyright abstract interface • Patent licencing a minefield - Spectrum: unencumbered, free licence, RAND, “all bets off” - RAMBUS case

Standards for software design • Software systems the most complex artifacts created by man - Temporal dependencies, discontinuous behaviour • Software, like physical structures, needs blueprints - Abstract away detail to give the high-level view - Represent complex relationships for deep understanding - Represent static, dynamic and causal relationships • Better design -> faster time-to-market, better quality, lower cost - The later you catch a bug, the more expensive it is • Analysis and Design notations are the means to draw the plans

Design standards in practice - UML • OO modelling languages (& books) multiplied in the early ‘90s - Wirfs-Brock (1990) - Coad/Yourdon (1991) - Booch at Rational (1994) - Rumbaugh’s OMT at GE labs (1991, 1996) - Odell/Martin (1994) - Jacobson at Ericsson (1992, 1995) - Shlaer/Mellor recursive design (1997) • By 1994 chaos ruled - Similar concepts, incompatible notations, few support tools

UML - unification • Late ‘94: Rumbaugh joins Booch at Rational • Early ‘95: Jacobson & Soley begin push for method standards - All major players represented at OMG meeting Jun. 95 - Mary Loomis leads ADTF, chartered to deliver standard • Late ‘95: Rumbaugh & Booch produce “Unified Method” 0.8 - Jacobson joins Rational - the “Three Amigos” • 1996: OMG issues RFP, Amigos release Rational UML 0.9 & 0.91, establish UML Partners to work on UML 1.0

• Jan. ‘97: OMG meeting in Tampa evaluates RFP submissions

UML standard - finale • Jan. ‘97 submissions from: - Rational & partners (DEC, HP, IBM, MS, Oracle, Unisys, etc.) - IBM/Objectime, Platinum, Ptech, Taskon/Reich, Softeam • All submitters agreed common approach during 1997 - Nov. ‘97: UML 1.1 adopted by OMG • Revisions under OMG process produce UML 1.2 (formatting cleanup), 1.3 (Mar 2000), 1.4 (Step 2001), 1.5 (Mar 2003)

• UML 1.4.2 became ISO/IEC 19501:2005, Jan. 2005

Standards in practice 14 Birmingham standards Copyright ©2007, Object Management Group. All Rights reserved. 6-Dec-2007 UML today • UML market grew at ~ 20% PA through the 2001-3 IT recession • Over 2/3 of organisations now use UML (BZ research, Aug. 04) - 80% plan to use UML in future - Dozens of tools - Over 100 UML-related books - Training widely available - UML certification • UML 2.0 published July ‘05, already widely used, on its way to ISO

Standards in practice 15 Birmingham standards Copyright ©2007, Object Management Group. All Rights reserved. 6-Dec-2007 Other OMG Modelling Standards • Meta-Object Facility (MOF) - Foundation on which all OMG modelling specifications build • XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) - Common standard for exchanging all MOF-based models • Semantics of Business Vocabulary & Rules (SBVR) - For defining business terms and how they are related • Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) - Published by BPMI in 2005 – now merged into OMG • Business Motivation Model (BMM), and others ...

Standards in practice 16 Birmingham standards Copyright ©2007, Object Management Group. All Rights reserved. 6-Dec-2007 OMG metamodel and syntax families Model Exchange via MOF Meta-meta model (Language) XML Metadata Interchange (XMI)

Common Business Business Organisation UML Warehouse Process Rules Structure Metamodel Metamodel Metamodel Metamodel Metamodel

UML UML Activity BPMN Structured Org Visual syntax syntax syntax English charts (?)

Standards in practice 17 Birmingham standards Copyright ©2007, Object Management Group. All Rights reserved. 6-Dec-2007 OMG Meta-Object Facility (MOF) • Standardised in parallel (and in cooperation) with UML • Foundation for OMG repository (meta data) architecture - Model, design and implement metamodels - Provides IDL, Java mappings to automate generation of concrete interfaces for specific metamodels

• XMI provides for storage/interchange of MOF models via XML - Capable of being common exchange format for all OMG modelling specifications

Standards in practice 18 Birmingham standards Copyright ©2007, Object Management Group. All Rights reserved. 6-Dec-2007 Business Process Modelling Notation • Business Process Modelling Initiative established August 2000 - Objective: create an XML business process language for both modelling & executing business processes - Result: Business Process Modelling Language (BPML) - Outflanked by IBM, Microsoft, BEA merging their early XML BPLs as Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) • Happily, BPMI also worked separately on a graphical Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) - Similar notational conventions to UML 2 activity diagram - Originally intended to map onto BPML - Now adapted to map onto very-similar BPEL4WS

Standards in practice 19 Birmingham standards Copyright ©2007, Object Management Group. All Rights reserved. 6-Dec-2007 Business Process Modelling Notation (cont.) • V 1.0 published May 2004 - Written by Steven White (IBM) & 28 authors from 24 orgs. • Provides visual syntax for Business Processes understandable by both technical and business users - For modelling all business processes, not just automateable ones - End of Business Process Modelling wars in sight? - No metamodel, no standard exchange format specified - ... now being rectified through OMG Business Process Definition metamodel process

Authorise credit card + Financial Institution

Pack goods Ship goods Distribution

Supplier Process Authorise order payment

Sales +

Standards in practice 21 Birmingham standards Copyright ©2007, Object Management Group. All Rights reserved. 6-Dec-2007 Semantics of Business Vocabulary & Rules • MOF metamodel for vocabularies & rules describing business - Designed from the start to be used with MDA - As for BPMN, applies to whole business, not just IT • Business rule: Rule that business can enact or revise - Based on first-order predicate logic, with limited extensions • Also precise, non-normative human-readable text syntaxes - “Structured English” - RuleSpeak - Business Rule Solutions’ established notation • Specification written in terms of itself (in Structured English)

Standards in practice 22 Birmingham standards Copyright ©2007, Object Management Group. All Rights reserved. 6-Dec-2007 Structural & Operative Rules • Structural rules are definitions - how a business chooses to organise the things it deals with - “A Car Hire Customer has at least one of the following: A Reservation An in-progress car hire A car hire completed within the last 5 years” • Operative Rules govern conduct of business activities - ... and therefore can be violated by the people involved - “A customer who appears drunk must not be given possession of a hire car”

It is obligatory that each rental car is owned by exactly one branch.

Quantifier Fact type Object type

Modality Object type Quantifier

It is obligatory that at the actual return date/time of each in-country rental and each international inward rental the local area of the return branch of the rental owns the rented car of the rental.

Standards in practice 24 Birmingham standards Copyright ©2007, Object Management Group. All Rights reserved. 6-Dec-2007 Why standards consortia work • Users like open standards - Avoids vendor lock-in - Externality – “An externality occurs when a decision causes costs or benefits to third party” - I care what computer/DVD/digital music format you use • So what motivates vendors to participate? - Cynical answer - in any market niche top supplier hates open standards, all others love them - Less cynical ... all vendors are also customers - Creating standards in a market is not a zero-sum game

Standards in practice 25 Birmingham standards Copyright ©2007, Object Management Group. All Rights reserved. 6-Dec-2007 Classic prisoner’s dilemma • A non-zero-sum game • Two prisoners held separately, police have insufficient evidence for conviction, so offer each the same deal - Testify against the other and the other remains silent –> betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice gets 10 years - Both stay silent –> both get 6 months for a minor charge - Both betray the other –> each gets 5 years sentence • Each must choose whether to talk or stay silent, neither knows what choice the other prisoner will make

• Dilemma: How should self-interested prisoners act?

Standards in practice 26 Birmingham standards Copyright ©2007, Object Management Group. All Rights reserved. 6-Dec-2007 Iterated prisoners’ dilemma • Prisoners’ dilemma not a zero-sum game - If both cooperate, total “punishment” is minimised • Iterated prisoners’ dilemma: played repeatedly against same opponents with memory of previous outcomes

• Robert Aumann showed rational players in indefinitely long games can sustain the cooperative outcome (1959 paper)

• Robert Axelrod ran iterated prisoners dilemma tournament between computer programs (“The Evolution of Cooperation”) - Greedy strategies did poorly, altruistic strategies did well, best was “tit for tat”

Standards in practice 27 Birmingham standards Copyright ©2007, Object Management Group. All Rights reserved. 6-Dec-2007 Evolution of cooperation • OMG and similar standards consortia are closed communities - Same individuals often represent companies for years - Individuals sometimes move companies to stay involved! • Cooperation evolves between individual representatives of competing companies

• Representatives who “cheat” tend to be excluded from working in the (self-organising) groups that create specifications

• As in iterated prisoners’ dilemma, attempts to “cheat” offer short-term reward, but long-term disadvantage

Standards in practice 28 Birmingham standards Copyright ©2007, Object Management Group. All Rights reserved. 6-Dec-2007 Summary • Standards are essential in the IT business • De-facto standards spring up quickly, usually single-vendor • De-jure (international) standards often slow to make, sometimes very academic

• Industry standards consortia (like OMG) aim for happy medium • Different meanings of “Open” • Economics and game theory help explain why it works