Editor's note: These minutes have not been edited. Area Summary Report by Keith Moore/University of Tennessee and Harald Alvestrand/UNINETT This is a short report on the status of the Applications Area as of the conclusion of the San Jose IETF meeting in December 1997. I. General Summary The Applications Area currently consists of the following sixteen working groups: Access, Searching and Indexing of Directories (asid) Chair: Tim Howes Responsible AD: Harald Alvestrand Application Confgiruation Access Protocol (acap) Chair: Chris Newman Responsible AD: Keith Moore Calendaring and Scheduling (calsch) Chairs: Anik Ganguily Robert Moskowitz Responsible AD: Harald Alvestrand Common Indexing Protocol (find) Chairs: Patrik Faltstrom Roland Hedberg Responsible AD: Harald Alvestrand Detailed Revision/Update of Message Standards (drums) Chair: Chris Newman Responsible AD: Harald Alvestrand Electronic Data Interchange-Internet Integration (ediint) Chair: Rik Drummond Responsible AD: Harald Alvestrand Extensions to FTP (ftpext) Chair: Paul Hethmon Responsible AD: Keith Moore HyperText Transfer Protocol (http) Chairs: Dave Raggett Larry Masinter Responsible AD: Keith Moore This gruop is jointly sponsored with the Transport Area Integrated Directory Services (ids) Chairs: Linda Millington Sri Sataluri Responsible AD: Harald Alvestrand This group is jointly sponsored with the User Services Area. Large Scale Multicast Applications (lsma) Chairs: Michael Myjak Jon Crowcroft Responsible AD: Harald Alvestrand (???) Area Advisors: Allison Mankin Allyn Romanov This group is jointly sponsored with the Transport Area. (???) MIME - X.400 Gateway (mixer) Chair: Urs Eppenberger Responsible AD: Keith Moore MIME Encapsulation of Aggregate HTML Documents (mhtml) Chair: Einar Stefferud Responsible AD: Keith Moore Mail and Directory Management (madman) Chair: Steve Kille Responsible AD: Harald Alvestrand NNTP Extensions (nntpext) Chair: Erik Fair Responsible AD: Keith Moore Receipt Notifications for Internet Mail (receipt) Chairs: Urs Eppenberger Ned Freed Responsible AD: Keith Moore Uniform Resource Names (urn) Chairs: Leslie Daigle John Curran Responsible AD: Keith Moore Of these, CALSCH and FTPEXT are new since the last IETF. In addition, the Application Configuration Access Protocol (ACAP) BOF held at the Montreal IETF has evolved into a working group with the same name, the Large Scale Multicast Usage BOF held in Montreal has evolved into the Large Scale Multicast Applications (LSMA) working group, the Network News Transport Protocol BOF held in Montreal has evolved into the Network News Transport Protocol Extensions (NNTPEXT) working group, and the Uniform Resource Names (URN) BOF held in Montreal has evolved into a working group by the same name. No Applications Area working groups have concluded since the last IETF. IDS, MIXER, MHTML, MADMAN, and RECEIPT are expected to conclude soon. The Applications Area sponsored five Birds of a Feather (BOF) sessions at the last IETF: FAX, Internet Printing Protocol, Telnet 3270 Extended, Uniform Resource Locators, and Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning. The reports for these follow the working group reports, below. II. Working Group Summaries 1. Access, Searching and Indexing of Directories (asid) Michael Mealling presented a plan to create a registry of company names that would return referrals to directory services for those companies. The registry will initially be available via RWhois with LDAP following. New WHOIS++ drafts have been produced that address a few issues that have surfaced since the documents went to proposed standard. The two application/directory MIME type drafts (framework and vcard profile) were discussed. All issues raised at the last meeting have been addressed, but several new issues were raised at this meeting and agreed to be discussed on the list. Note that several other groups are depending on these documents progressing (e.g., calendar, vpim). The LDAP API was discussed. The group wants to add this document to its charter, and agreed to try to progress it on the standards track, falling back to informational if heavy resistance is encountered. LDAPv3 was discussed at length. The group identified outstanding issues with the current drafts, and consensus was that the specification was too complicated and represented a revolutionary rather than evolutionary step from LDAPv2. After much discussion, the group came to consensus that the current documents should undergo a hard feature review and cut, based on known deficiencies with LDAPv2, and that the extensibility mechanism should be used for other features. 2. Application Configuration Access Protocol (acap) The design team presented proposed solutions to all the open issues in the current spec. Only two issues remained controversial. There was guidance from the WG to separate the base protocol from initial dataset schema definitions. There was also direction to search for more prior work similar to the personal addressbook schema before proceeding. 3. Calendaring and Scheduling (calsch) The calendaring and Scheduling WG meeting was attended by 110 people and covered the planned agenda. The new agreement about the "Standard Content Type" was announced and was well received. Issues about the standard content were discussed, several open issues remain for discussion and resolution on the mailing list. The issues regarding the peer-to-peer protocol were summarized and discussed, the open isses will be discussed on the mailing list. Based on the meeting, the WG decided to explore collaboration with the ASID WG regarding syntax used to represent the content. The WG requested the help of the ADs to document a standard server location method to be used by all new distributed application protocols, this would include RFC 2052 and the work proposal made by the MMUSIC WG in their SIP (Keith do I have the acronym right?). The editors of the peer-to-peer protocol with help from Keith Moore, AD will explore the use of existing protocols, incuding possible extensions/subsets currently under discussion in other WGs. 4. Common Indexing Protocol (find) By Patrik Faltstrom: The FIND Working Group has decided that the current draft needs to be split into an architecture document and a protocol document. They discussed the open issues with CIPv3 including aggregation and the meaning of the dataset identifier. They also discussed the draft on the ldap schema as well as CIP and the WWW. The ldap schema will be turned into a description of an index-object type. They updated their charter to reflect the new definitions to the various parts of the protocol. Addendum by Roland Hedberg: Actually the ldap-cip draft will be split into two documents: One document will be a description of a index object while the other will describe how a LDAPv2 client will interact with and view a index mesh. 5. Detailed Revision/Update of Message Standards (drums) All three drums documents (ABNF, 822bis, smtp) were reviewed quickly. Progress was made on a number of open issues. The abnf spec is nearing completion and the other two documents are making progress. 6. Electronic Data Interchange-Internet Integration (ediint) We presented two papers and the initial requirements for the third. The first papers, focused on EDI over SMTP, were well received with two predominate modifications: change applications/x-pkcs7-mime to multipart/signed and move the examples from the second paper into the first -- shortening the second paper. The feeling was that additional requirements for the third paper on process-to-process EDI require more detail before preceding. Also we should not be recommending new protocols, only recommending how to use existing one. 7. Extensions to FTP (ftpext) The i18n draft was generally thought to be ok. Minor suggestions on reorganization. On the MLST draft, there were numerous minor enhancements, changes suggested. Nothing especially contentious and several point were relegated back to the mailing list for final discussion and disposition. A couple of new topics were brought up: ability to abort a MLST response (ie use data connection), ability to specify what facts to return in MLST. Someone volunteered to write up a draft on checkpoint/restart, SIZE, and MDTM. Security discussed briefly and the group will be reviewing a couple of drafts in the area. 8. HyperText Transfer Protocol (http) The HTTP working group met twice. We heard about (good) performance results from HTTP/1.1 pipelining, and discussed several issues that have arisen as implementations of HTTP/1.1 is proceeding. Some of these may result in either clarifications or revisions of the spec as it moves to Draft Standard. There are a few major issues still left: e.g., hit metering, content negotiation, and the working group will keep going for at least until the next IETF. There is confusion in the standards arena for security-related HTTP protocols: SHTTP will be revised, there are proposals for new authentication methods, and to revise the SSL Tunnelling draft. Somehow these all need to get sorted out. There are many groups that want to use HTTP or something like it, but with extensions. Some of those seem like they're appropriate (web authoring) and others are more questionable. We're awaiting a new PEP draft, and perhaps that will help. 9. Integrated Directory Services (ids) Progress has been made on coming to closure on a number of Drafts and the IDS WG is within sight of completing the activities on its Charter. The Root Naming Context Draft is being progressed as Experimental and the X.500 Catalogue as Informational. The DNS Aliases Draft is being sent back to the list with a number of comments for the Group to discuss before being progressed. A revised version of the Schema Requirements Draft incorporating the comments received in the meeting will be circulated by Friday 13th December and the group decided that this Draft should be progressed as a Proposed Standard. Some revisions will be made to the BCP on Directory Draft before progressing as a BCP before Christmas. A revised Draft on the CCSO Nameserver (Ph) Architecture is due this week then should be ready for progression. Presentations were given on the Naming Plan for an Internet Directory Service and an approach to using Domains in LDAP. The conclusion was that the authors would get together to produce a combined Draft and that Hoyt Kesterson would obtain feedback from ISO about expanding the registration authority to accommodate this scheme. The WG discussed the open issues on the Finding stuff Draft which included whether this work should be part of IDS or the DNS work. The conclusion was that isuue will be taken to the SRV WG with a possible solution being a new WG. 10. Large Scale Multicast Applications (lsma) Michael Myjak introduced the BOF, and announced that it had now been approved as a Working Group, Applications Area directors and Transport Area Co-directors would be responsible for this groups output. Michael reviewed the groups charter, and was followed by an outline review of the two products the group intends to produce. Three presentations followed, which identified a variety of related work in the field of LSMA. 11. Mail and Directory Management (madman) MADMAN did not meet in San Jose. The MADMAN WG last met in Los Angeles in March 1996, where various agreements were made. There are three related standards track MIB documents being worked on by the WG. Editorial work on two of these is complete and the final one (Mail) will be completed in the next month. The WG expects to submit these documents as RFCs and then disband. 12. MIME - X.400 Gateway (mixer) The MIXER working group did not meet at the San Jose IETF. The group is one year behind schedule. The most recent version of the core specification has been distributed on the mailing list, publication as I-D is expected end of January 97. Five companion documents are ready and will be sent to the IESG together with the core document for consideration as Proposed Standard. 13. MIME Encapsulation of Aggregate HTML Documents (mhtml) Our Application Area Directors reported that Last Call has expired on our MHTML Proposed Standard drafts, and that they should be approved by the IESG in its next Teleconference. The WG then proceeded to work on its last remaining deliverable, which is an Informational RFC Draft to deal with implementation issuses that have been found to be important, and which will arise as implementors proceed with their implementations. Five vendors have indicated plans to implement, and one of these vendors has implemented an MHTML Client. The WG Mailing list will remain in operation in support of implmentation efforts and to work on the informational draft. The WG in mominally deactivated, except for staying alive in support of mplementation efforts. No meetings are planned until the WG is reactivated to consider advancment of the Proposed MHTML Standard to Draft status. 14. NNTP Extensions (nntpext) The Working Group met for the first time in San Jose. The WG charter and milestone list was reviewed by those present to focus effort. Consensus was reached on the following items, subject to full working group approval: 1. Stan Barber as document editor. 2. publication with suitable warnings about it being a survey of commonly implemented extensions and not to be interpreted as a standard of draft-barber-nntp-imp-05.txt as an informational RFC. Some discussion of how to handle the existing extensions versus new extensions with an extension negotiation mechanism in place. Some issues were deferred to discussion on the mailing list; minutes to follow later. 15. Receipt Notifications for Internet Mail (receipt) [ note by Keith Moore ] RECEIPT did not meet in San Jose. It is putting the final touches on its internet-draft on Message Disposition Notifications and expects to complete its work before the Memphis IETF. 16. Uniform Resource Names (urn) The URN WG session included a discussion of the 4 current Internet drafts that we have (in generic terms, URN Discovery System Requirements & Framework, URN Syntax, NAPTR, and HTTP Conventions for URN Resolution). A few issues were identified with each document, and consensus was felt on most of them. Therefore, URN Syntax, NAPTR and HTTP Conventions will go through one more quick editing phase before being circulated on the mailing list and (barring further issues) submitted for consideration as RFCs. The System Requirements document is younger and will be restructured before calling for discussion on particular items. The issue of "URN:" in the syntax was addressed: there seemed to be general consensus in the room that it should be part of the syntax; of the people in the room, several said they _required_ it in order to get their work done, and no one said having it would break their work. Volunteers were sought and obtained for tackling the URN Namespace Requirements document, and also proposed namespaces for grandfathering. To everyone's amazement, we accomplished this with the minimum of discussion and were done in 1 1/2 hours. Hurrah! III. BOF Summaries 1. FAX BOF This was the second meeting of the Internet Fax BOF. The meeting as "conducted like a WG" by co-chairs Dave Crocker and James Rafferty, based on the draft WG charter. The group concentrated on the terminology and data format type items from the draft charter at this meeting. In review of service models, the group agreed that two models: 1) Messaging and 2) Session-oriented, cover the broad requirements for Internet Fax and that other potential service models such as Real-time and Internet Aware Fax can be considered as subsets under two main service models. The group agreed that the Messaging model would take priority in the WG work. Three presentations were made: 1) IFax from the WIDE consortium 2) VPIM (Voice Profile for Internet Mail) and its use of fax, from VPIM editor Glen Parsons and 3) Concept for single Internet Fax messaging/session-oriented protocol from Larry Masinter. The IFax and VPIM proposals both made use of TIFF-F as a data format. The group then discussed data formats in detail. Consensus was reached that a common file format was needed which would meet most of the current needs, but there is also interest in other file formats. TIFF Class F was proposed and accepted in principle as the (first) common file format. The next step is to prepare a standards track version of an "image-tiff; class=f" MIME type, which draws from existing documents produced by other groups (S.100, original TIFF-F spec from Joe Campbell). The group also agreed that the ability of a file format to be used in a "streaming" mode, per the Masinter proposal, is important. There was also discussion on potential mandatory support for a text data type, but no agreement was reached. 2. Internet Printing Protocol BOF The meeting was attended by 80 people. Presentations were made of current requirements, current technical draft and proposed WG Charter. The charter called for the development of new MIME types, an application level protocol using these MIME types, a mapping onto the current HTTP, and a directory schema for IPP related information plus a mapping to LDAP for that schema. The meeting was almost unanimous in the agreement that a WG should be formed, but the IETF Area Directors had some issues with the planned scope. Several attendants had an issue with the use of HTTP as transport mechanism. A better motivation for why RFC 1179 cannot be enhanced was also requested. The Area Directors suggested that the group reconsiders the scope of the project, before trying to get the approval as WG. 3. Telnet 3270 Extended BOF The tn3270e working group BOF occurred and was attended by approximately 20 members. Discussion of the charter and outstanding issues resulted in consensus for establishing the working group and addressing the next set of enhancements. A number of attendees offered assistance in working on the various issues and new rfc's. A general understanding was established regarding the process and expectations of the IETF. The working group will most likely extend beyond twenty four months and produce several rfc's. An updated charter was prepared and submitted to the listsrv for review. Closure of the charter is expected in the next 2-3 weeks. 4. Uniform Resource Locators BOF The URL BOF met. We decided that we needed a new working group to consider the procedures for vetting new URL schemes. The working group might also consider the current raft of URL scheme proposals for their compliance with those rules. While the current A-D's rules are interesting, the goal is to create community consensus. It's hoped that the generic syntax document would be submitted for Draft Standard before the URL process working group really gets going. There were volunteers for (co)chair (Rich Petke) and document editors (Larry Masinter, Dan Zigmond). 5. Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning BOF The BOF on WWW Distributed Authoring and Versioning was held on Wednesday, December 11, 1996, from 09:00-11:30, with 79 people in attendance over the duration of the meeting. Jim Whitehead presented an overview and history of WWW Distributed Authoring and Versioning, including information on how to become involved in the work of the DAV group, which was followed by a detailed presentation on the current DAV functionality requirements. There was a lively discussion on the requirements, including such issues as lock administration, use of public key technology, access control models, the degree of intelligence of "move" functionality, and recommendations of related protocols and systems to investigate (such as AFS, IMAP, and ACAP for their models of access control). These issues will be discussed further on our mailing list. At the end of the session, the attendees were polled on whether they thought it would be worthwhile for the IETF to work on WWW Distributed Authoring and Versioning. Overwhelmingly, the attendees thought the IETF should pursue work in this area (the vast majority were in favor, with 2-3 opposed, and a handful of abstentions). IV. Efforts Which May Result in Future Working Groups 1. HTTP Lite Several working groups and BOFs have been considering use of HTTP as the basis for other application-layer protocols. There was considerable interest in development of a small subset of HTTP, tentatively called "HTTP lite", for such purposes. 2. rwhois++ There is interest in developing an extended version of the rwhois protocol, called rwhois++. This would be loosely based on the rwhois protocol currently used in the Operations Area, but is more of a general directory services protocol. If this effort were accepted by the APPS ADs, it would presumbly take place within the ASID working group. 3. Schema format registry Several individuals expressed interest in a standard format and registry for database schema. The schema format would allow for a standard representation of data models (NOT for the data itself) which could be used across different resolver and/or directory applications. The registry would allow public access to those data models. This is intended to aid evolution of directory services by providing a well-known place to find existing schema.