[mddi-dev] Update meeting minutes (07/13)

[Sébastien Demathieu <sebastien.demathieu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello all,

You will find below the minutes of the last MDDi meeting (July 13th) in Bilbao. Feel free to modify
and/or provide feedback. FYI, a joint presentation with CS is also scheduled at ICSSEA in December.

Attendees:

- committers: Sébastien Demathieu, Tom Ritter, Xavier Blanc, Mariano Belaunde
- interested parties: Vinay Vkulkarni (TCS), Stéphane Lacrampe (Obeo)
- other: Benoit Baudry (INRIA)

Agenda:

- Project scope and components
- Discussion with interested parties
- Position w.r.t. other projects
- Discussion on the next steps for MDDi

1) Project scope and components

Project scope and components have been presented to the interested parties. MDDi is part of the
Eclipse Modeling project. It focuses on model integration (syntax/semantics) and includes the
following components:

- ModelBus
- Semantic binding
- Orchestration Tool
- MDA tool container

For more details regarding the scope and the components, check out the presentation available on
the web site (http://www.eclipse.org/mddi/MDDi_Update_051306.pdf).

2) Position w.r.t. other projects

Compuware has launched a QVT project proposal called M2M. In that context, it does not make sense
anymore to host the France Telecom QVT implementation in MDDi. MDDi is more about using
transformation technologies to support semantics integration rather than developing these. Mariano
will get in touch with people from Compuware. That said, the adapter to connect the France Telecom
tools to ModelBus is still most welcome in the context of MDDi.

Process enactment is out of the scope of MDDi. One can see the orchestration tool as a low level
support to chain modeling service invocations. A process enactment tool would sit on top of it to
drive processes based, or partially based, on modeling services. Philippe Desfray is also involved
in EPF, we will need to have a discussion with him: 1) to check whether EPF does process enactment
2) to discuss the interfaces between EPF and the Orchestration Tool.

3.1) Interested party: TCS

Vinay presented its vision of a model integration bus: a dedicated layer on top of a generic service
bus (various candidate technologies: WS, CORBA...) focusing on syntactic and semantic integration.
That fits with what MDDi is trying to do.

Vinay highlighted the need for the features below in ModelBus:

- Support for model deltas, to limit the size of XMI exchanges and improve peformances

- Support for large-scale deployment (Internet-ready)

TCS has already contributed a document and would be willing to contribute related technologies. Our
goal is to try to unify various efforts around model integration. There are on-going discussions
with CS and TOPCASED. TCS will be added to the loop for the next meeting scheduled in Sept.

There are also acquaintances between the TCS ideas and the semantic integration aspects of MDDi, 
which is interesting given that we need external support in that area.

3.2) Interested party: Obeo

Stéphane proposed several possible contributions to the MDDi project:

- contributing an adapter to connect the Acceleo tool to the ModelBus

- contributing a MDR2EMF translator that can be used in the ModelBus infrastructure. The translator
would come in the ModelBus code base and would be owned by Xavier.

- contributing the Acceleo tool itself.

The first two contributions are definitely welcome. We need adapters to be developed and the MDR2EMF
translator would be useful to support various flavours of XMI.

The last proposal does not fall in the scope of MDDi, which focuses on model integration. Recruiting
external contributiors has been stated has a direction for the Modeling project. Obeo would need to
investigate which project would be a better fit to host the Acceleo tool.

4) Discussion on the next steps for MDDi

- It is important for the MDDi project to get the notification service, the registry and the
Orchestration Tool released ASAP, when the IP review is completed.

- Mariano highlighted the need for improved usability regarding the ModelBus and the adapters.

- Sébastien suggested having a registry running on the MDDi web site, for demonstration purposes.
Tom agreed on this idea.

- Sébastien suggested recruiting people interested in release engineering to perform the MDDi builds.

5) Next meeting

The next MDDi update meeting is scheduled: Sept. 20th, 21st in the context of the MODELWARE meeting
in Palaiseau.

6) Actions

- Add Vinay in the loop for the next ModelBus meeting with CS in Sept. (Xavier)

- Ask Philippe Desfray about relationships between the Orchestration Tool and EPF (Sébastien)

- Send a short description of the MDR2EMF bridge (Stéphane)

- Recruit people interested in release engineering (Sébastien)

- Investigate on the delays related to the due diligence process (Sébastien)

Thanks,

Sébastien