See also: OATC Wiki Home
Date: September 8-10, 2008
Venue: DHI, Agern Alle 5, Hørsholm, Denmark
Participants:
Jan Gregersen, DHI / LicTek (gregersen@lictek.dk) (chairman of the meeting)
Adrian Harper, Wallingford Software (adrian.harper@wallingfordsoftware.com)
Stef Hummel, Deltares (stef.hummel@deltares.nl)
~onnoroos, Alterra (Onno.Roosenschoon@wur.nl)
~don (Gena), Deltares (gennadii.donchyts@deltares.nl)
Peter Gijsbers, Deltares (Peter.Gijsbers@deltares.nl)
Jon Goodall, Univ South Carolina (goodall@engr.sc.edu)
Rob Knapen, Alterra (Rob.Knapen@wur.nl)
Peter Schade, Bundesanstalt fuer Wasserbau, Germany (Peter.Schade@BAW.DE)
Andrea Antonello, Universita` di Trento, (andrea.antonello@gmail.com)
Apologies:
~psi@dhigroup.com, DHI - Water & Environment (psi@dhigroup.com)
Documents:
http://www.openmi.org/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/openmi
wiki.openmi.org
* Draft Agenda
1. Minutes from previous OATC meeting
2. Maintenance and support
Reported bugs
(GOTO bug list on SourceForge)
Help issues
(GOTO help issues on SourceForge)
Discussion issues
(GOTO discussion issues on SourceForge)
3. OpenMI 2.0 Issues
3.1 Use cases
3.2 OpenMI 2.0 architecture
3.3 Development and release road map
3. OpenMI Java and OpenMI .net synchronization
3.1 clarification on how you consider the state of this SDK (Rob)
4. OATC Procedures
4.1 Proposal for procedures for OpenMI Standard releases
From Jan: I have at task from one of the previous OpenMI Association Executive Committee meeting to elaborate a proposal for OpenMI Standard release procedure. These procedures will define the rules for how to go from OpenMI Standard release version x to OpenMI standard version x+1. I think that the OpenMI standard it selves is the most important asset of the OpenMI Association, which also means that rules for how this standard may be change becomes very important. I thought a lot about it (apparently, more difficult that I first anticipated), and I have now written my first idea down in draft form. I would appreciate if we, at the OATC meetings, could discuss these ideas.
Please review the Proposed procedure for OpenMI Standard releases.
4.2 Review and update the OATC procedures
5. www.OpenMI.org and wiki.OpenMI.org
5.1 Review the getting started pages on the wiki
We have already put enormous efforts into documenting the OpenMI standard and the SDK. By the end of the HarmonIt project we wrote hundreds of page in the formal documentation (the Book A -F stuff), and more recently we have work especially on the wiki to improve the documentation in order to facilitate people new to OpenMI (the HowTo pages). So even though we are well above the typical documentation level for research projects, we still need to improve. I think that improving documentation and guidelines will be the area where we achieve most effect in order to get OpenMI used around the world. Naturally we still need to develop new features, but should not sacrifice documentation. I believe that the getting started pages on the wiki is currently be best entry for new people and I will typically direct such people to these pages. I would appreciate if we could spend a little time going through the getting started pages and assign task for improvements. Specifically, I have noticed that after the upgrade of the wiki sofware some pages have been corrupted.
David Maidment recently wrote in a mail to Roger. "I think the OpenMI conceptual model is presently contained in Appendix G or somewhere else near the end of your large manual. I wonder if this model could be restated in a separate document so that reviewers of it don't have to extract the key points out of a huge software engineering manual. I am thinking of something that could be read and understood by your hydrologic science colleagues at CHE, the scientists in our ChyMP group, etc.". Most likely he did not know about the wiki, which make me think if the wiki exposed sufficiently on the official openmi web,
(Jan)
5.2 Could we simply use a wiki for the official OpenMI web site
Currently the official OpenMI is exposed on three different web sites www.OpenMI.org, wiki.OpenMI.org and http://sourceforge.net/projects/openmi. There are naturally good reasons for running these three web sites. www.OpenMI.org is the very official nicely formatted quality assured stuff, whereas the wiki is more quick and dirty, and finally sourceforge provides tools for version control, task and bug trackers, and help forum. It is my impression that people, in their search for information about OpenMI may get confused, also I sometimes have doubts about whether I should direct people towards the wiki or www.openmi.org. Maintenance of thee web sites is time consuming, and since we do not know how much funding we will have when the Life project ends, we need to go for agile solutions. I discussed these issues with Michiel Blind some month ago and we agreed it should be investigated if we simply could use a wiki for the official web site. There are examples of very nicely formatted wikis around (see e.g.). In my opinion largest advantage of switching to a wiki, it the ability for a large group to easily edit the text on the wiki - so we get the nice stuff out there quickly. So, what is the OATC opinion about this? Can we recommend specific wiki software? Would it be possible to spend some time setting something up, that will demonstrate how is could look? Jan Gregersen
6. Miscellaneous issues
6.1 Meeting plan for 2009
I have proposed dates for the OATC meeting for 2009. Please see the OATC Calendar
6.2 How can Java developers contribute
(from Rob Knapen( There are some people expressing interest to contribute to the OpenMI
Java development, any ideas how this can be set up? Is it something the
OpenMI TC would like to handle, as part of the OpenMI open source
community?
6.3 OpenMI Compliance HTML tool
Adrain has completed the first version of a tool that can take the OpenMIComplinanceInfo.xml file and transform it into readable HTML. This tool is intended to be used by the OATC in to take XML files submitted to the OpenMI Association and make them to HTML and then put these op the OpenMI web (the OpenMI compliant components page). I tried to make it work, but I did not have sufficient patience to make it work. Always a problem with command line programs that take a number of arguments and file paths. Since this tool is something that is going to be used only whenever someone submits a XML file to the OpenMI Association for approval, I think it would be very useful with a simple user interface. Otherwise you will forget how to work with it from time to time. I can see that one of the arguments is the path to the xsd file. Would it not be simpler to have a copy of this file at the same place as the OpenMIComplinceHTML.exe file, it is always the same XSD file that should be used anyway.
As I see it a GUI will simply be one form / dialog which has a field to browse for the OpenMICompliance.xml file and one field to define the name and location of the ouput.HTML file.
Jan Gregersen
7. Tasks and unresolved issues
All tasks are handled by sourceForge. GOTO: OpenMI Tasks on source forge
