Minutes for the Use Case Group Conference Call of 7

Minutes for the Use Case Group Conference Call of 7.21.03

The teleconference call for the Use Case Subgroup of the BPEL TC was held at 1 p.m. PT/4 pm ET on July 21, 2003. The following members participated in the call: Chunbo Huang, Sazi Temel, Yin-Leng Husband, Sid Askary, Sally St. Amand, John Evdemon, Harvey Reed, Monica Martin, Kevin Hein, and Rajesh Manglani.

Sally St. Amand volunteered to take minutes.

John Evdemon sent out an updated agenda several hours prior to the conference call. The lack of lead-time may negate the group's ability to address specific use cases. However John wanted to distribute a populated template for the group to review and comment on.

Sazi Temel raised the issue of being unable to communicate with the Use Case group. He has contacted OASIS on this; John will follow up also as others have experienced the same problem.

The initial question raised the issue of the interpretation and meaning of use case. That is: are use cases a collection of scenarios or do they depict system requirements. There was a consensus by the group that use cases are intended to identify requirements and to clarify the BPEL specification.

Chunbo and Yin-Leng will draft a document to clarify the definition of use case, scenarios, requirements, and other applicable terms.

Next on the agenda was a document prepared by Harvey Reed and sent out the morning of the conference call. Harvey's intent was for the document to serve as a starting point to get the group engaged in a discussion of potential use cases. Harvey's stated goal is to create high-level use cases to be used for both abstract and executables. Monica made the observation that the deliverables may have to be segregated in order for them to map back.

And there is a need to look at what our artifacts are. John commented that there has been some talk on presentation. Diane Jordan had previously proposed an Implementation Subgroup. John plans to add the issue of creating an Implementation Group to the agenda for the full TC. John cautioned about the scope of the TC and made the observation that most of the work of an implementation group would be non-normative.

Monica posed the question: Is there a difference between implementation and interoperability? And made the observation that we need to keep interoperability in the forefront.

Harvey's proposed metaphor for a use case was the Supply Chain. He did a walk through of his example. Questions and comments during the walk through included: -does BPEL support collaboration, -is the intent of use cases to show the boundaries of BPEL as well as raise issues, -there may be a need to "deep drill" in areas where the specification needs particular attention, -what is the reach of the BPEL spec versus the work of other groups/efforts, -is the intent to internationalize the specification. Specifically will there be scenarios that include actors that are geographically distributed?

Yin-Leng will compile a list of resources relating to internationalization, and make it available.

Yin-Leng also raised the issue of workflow patterns and their applicability. The comments included: -workflow patterns relate more to abstracts, -are not applicable for the work of the use case group, -the group may find the application, versus the creation, of patterns useful, and, -raises the scope issue again. John suggested connecting with the Liaison subgroup any group whose work is, or appears, to be abutting the work of the BPEL TC.

Harvey will send out a revision to the document distributed the morning of the call. And he will initiate a discussion thread among the subgroup to build on the work done on the teleconference call.

John requested that all Use case group members review the template and the 6 items that were described; and forward comments and suggestions on the content, process and template that will advance the work of the use case subgroup.

John will send out an email on 7.22.03 on the issues to be put before the full TC. An agreement was reached to have a teleconference call next Monday, July 28 at 1 p.m. PT/4 p.m. ET, and then to have a teleconference call every other week at the same time, i.e. Aug 11, Aug 25 … This will enable the use case group to develop items in advance of the full TC calls.

The meeting adjourned at 5:02.