CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by Einar Stefferud/NMA and Ray Freiwirth/RCI Minutes of the IFIP Electronic Mail Management BOF (EMAILMGT) Three EMAILMGT BOF Sessions were held at the Columbus IETF, under a special arrangement for the IFIP WG 6.5/6.6 Chartered EMailMgt Working Group to meet with the IETF to both draw on IETF attendance for participation, and to bring additional IFIP participation into IETF. IFIP WG 6.5/6.6 and the EMAILMGT participants are very pleased and grateful for the opportunity to serve and support IETF interests, and to draw on IETF resources. First Session Several Documents were distributed during the first BOF session, and the mailing lists for the various EMailMgt Task Teams and working groups were announced. Distributed Documents EMGT-93-02 through EMGT-93-14. The main EMailMgt list is: To subscribe to the list: Requirements Document Task Team: To subscribe to the list: MO/MIB Document Task Team To subscribe to the list: Modeling Document Task Team: To subscribe to the list: IETF Mail and Directory Mgt MIB WG: To subscribe to the list: Ray Freiwirth led a review of the current EMailMgt Draft Requirements Document (EMGT 93-006). The emphasis of the meeting was on terminology and making sure that everybody understood the terms as used, and everyone understood the functions associated with the terms. One major area of discussion was how to identify a user that becomes an ``email manager'' for some functions that are allowed for that user by the real manager. It was decided that no special term is needed for such a user. The following sentence was added to the definition of ``user'': ``Has capability to monitor its own mailbox, local environment and remote logs, files, etc. as may be allowed''. Some current definitions will be further modified with regard to minor spelling/phrasing problems. The concept of a Relative Domain is still being discussed. It is not clear if the concept and definition of Manager Responsibility Area (MRA) needs to be expanded. We are trying to avoid the confusion that would follow from using the term ``domain'' in yet another context with yet another meaning. It was noted that it is important for the document to state clearly that the EMailMgt requirements are not dictating a new kind of management, but rather calls for use of existing methods and tools to meet EMailMgt requirements. 1 Second Session Harald Alvestrand lead a discussion of his Draft EMailMgt Modeling Document (EMGT 93-002). The concept of a gateway needs to be clearly defined in the diagrams to show how Gateways fit into the EMail infrastructure (e.g., when they sit astride two different EMail environments). Omission of gateways would imply that EMail Gateways are outside the scope of EMailMgt! They obviously are not. It was generally agreed that most of the model diagrams need revision. The Dataflows diagram needs more work to indicate interchange between Management Responsibility Areas. Some managers will use information to reconfigure systems, which implies that there are different time-frames for different data flows. The following questions were raised regarding general terminology. o Why not define ``customer'' as defined in the English language? Answer: Because we need a clear a distinction between a user and customer. A customer makes value judgments. Users do not, unless they also happen to be customers at the same time. o Why not define mail service as just a mail transfer service? Answer: Inside the mail system there are many objects to be managed. Some of these objects might be managed by a single EMail manager, by a group of EMail managers or by a ``user/manager'' or just by a user. o Where does Message Store fit into this model? Answer: We need to identify split User Agent and Mail Box functionality, and call out that a user can manage part of the mailbox. The model needs better definition of users having some of the capabilities of a manager, and of users having some manager roles. In Section 3.2: the diagram needs to be expanded to show all the services that were identified in the requirements document (i.e., Security, Routing, etc.). This relates directly to the ability to manage the EMail portion of the data that resides in any of the services, and the ability to use their services: Directory; Network Management; Logging; etc. Detailing of both MTA and UA model diagrams should be modified to show more dimension with respect to sources, queues and sinks (flow detail). Third Session This session was dedicated to reconciling all differences between the 2 use of terms in the Requirements and Modeling Documents. This was determined to be the key high priority objective of this set of EMailMgt meetings. Ray Freiwirth lead the discussion, following the requirements document. With the work of the previous two days and a better understanding of the model document, great strides were made in reconciliation. Requirements Section 2 needs to be better aligned with the model document, especially paragraph 4. For Requirements section 3.3.2 (Remote Email Service), there was a general discussion about IMAP. Somebody should cross-participate in the IMAP Group to make sure and that both Groups are aligned. The number one GOAL for both documents is to achieve alignment on the one hand, and comprehensiveness on the other. We are working to identify all the relevant elements and entities that require management and show how they relate to to each other in the overall model. Final Observations We could never have achieved our goals for this meeting without holding three separate session on three separate days. The final session on Friday was critical to pull everything back together in the end. It is noted that the next EMailMgt meetings are scheduled for June (OIW at NIST) and July (IETF at Amsterdam). Other meetings of EMailMgt Task Teams are also planned, and will be announced on the EMailMgt mailing list. Since the next meetings are several months into the future, we plan to complete edits of the EMailMgt Requirements and Modeling Documents and publish them as Internet-Drafts to obtain wider distribution and to facilitate more robust discussions on the main mailing list. The Internet-Drafts should be published by the end of April at which time we will begin the process of review, comment, revision, and adoption of these documents using consensus methods in the EMailMgt mailing list, based on the published Internet-Drafts. Attendees Harald Alvestrand Harald.Alvestrand@delab.sintef.no Jules Aronson aronson@nlm.nih.gov Robert Beer r-beer@onu.edu Richard Bjers rich.bjers@uc.edu Cyrus Chow cchow@ames.arc.nasa.gov Steve DeJarnett steve@ibmpa.awdpa.ibm.com Urs Eppenberger eppenberger@switch.ch Erik Fair fair@apple.com Francois Fluckiger fluckiger@vxcern.cern.ch Ned Freed ned@innosoft.com 3 Raphael Freiwirth 5242391@mcimail.com Marcello Frutig frutig@rnp.impa.br Christine Garland garland@ihspa.att.com Kenneth Goodwin goodwin@a.psc.edu Jeroen Houttuin houttuin@rare.nl Barbara Jennings bjjenni@sandia.gov Thomas Johannsen Thomas.Johannsen@ebzaw1.et.tu-dresden.de Kenneth Key key@cs.utk.edu Jim Knowles jknowles@binky.arc.nasa.gov Sylvain Langlois Sylvain.Langlois@exp.edf.fr Bruce Mackey brucem@cinops.xerox.com Ignacio Martinez martinez@rediris.es Keith Moore moore@cs.utk.edu Brad Passwaters bjp@sura.net Jim Romaguera romaguera@cosine-mhs.switch.ch Yzhak Ronen y.ronen@homxa.att.com Gary Rowe gjrowe@attmail.com Chris Shaw cshaw@banyan.com Sue Smith smiths.es.net Einar Stefferud stef@nma.com Panos-Gavriil Tsigaridas Tsigaridas@fokus.berlin.gmd.dbp.de 4