FW: Info about HTTP workflow effort for webDAV meeting

Caught by the spam filter.

- Jim

-----Original Message-----
From:	Keith Swenson [SMTP:kswenson@netscape.com]
Sent:	Wednesday, April 01, 1998 10:55 PM
To:	w3c-dist-auth@w3.org
Subject:	[Spam?] Info about HTTP workflow effort for webDAV meeting

I will be speaking for 5 minutes in the webDAV meeting on Thursday in
the IETF meeting in LA on the following subject, and I thought you might
appreciate getting some information in advance of the meeting.  (My
apologies to those DASL memebers that are also on this list -- the
information below is the same.)

I simply want to introduce my effort to form a working group to define a
standard protocol based on HTTP to allow workflow systems to
interoperate. A more accurate description might be a "Protocol for
Starting and Monitoring Generic Asynchronous Services."  Consider that
you have a service available somewhere on your net; this protocol is
designed to be a standard way to invoke the service, receive an ID for
that invocation, and ways to control and monitor that invocation of the
service.  There is additionally a way to register to receive events with
that invocation of the service, and a way to send the event.  This
protocol is useful both for invoking workflow processes, as well as
providing a way to workflow systems to invoke external asynchronous
services.

We have a group of companies that are already working on this.  We
believe that there is great benefit to forming an IETF working group in
order to best coordinate this effort with the other similar activities
going on within the Applications area of IETF.  We believe we want to
use XML encoded data sent over HTTP, which is well alligned with the
webDAV work (but we want to discuss how satisfied people are with this
approach).  I have heard that there are others who want to work on the
problem of basic event registration and delivery over HTTP, and we would
like to see this work coordinated.

For the time being we have a proposal for a working group charter which
you can check at a temporary location of:

    http://people.netscape.com/kswenson/http_workflow.html

We have yet to set up a permanent home for this and mailing lists.  For
now, if you are interested in this area, please let me know at
kswenson@netscape.com and I will let you know when we set up the mailing
list. We are considering holding a preliminary meeting:

    May 4-5, 1998
    Costa Mesa, California

This date and place is set to coincide withthe Workflow Managment
Coalition meeting at the same location on the 6th through the 8th.
Please forward this information to people who may be interested in
participating in this effort.

-Keith Swenson

Received on Thursday, 2 April 1998 13:00:21 UTC