# RM-ODP and URI

Owen Rees (rtor@ansa.co.uk)
Thu, 29 Sep 1994 17:32:58 BST

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    Message-Id: <9409291632.AA05532@plato.ansa.co.uk>

    To: uri@bunyip.com

    Subject: RM-ODP and URI

    Date: Thu, 29 Sep 1994 17:32:58 BST

    From: Owen Rees <rtor@ansa.co.uk>

Larry Masinter asked me if I was interested in trying to summarize the work on
the Basic Reference Model of Open Distributed Processing (RM-ODP), and this
note is a partial answer. There is too much in RM-ODP to summarize here, so I
shall try to focus on some areas of overlap between RM-ODP and the URI work,
and give some pointers to where anyone interested can find out more.

The ODP work is being done in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC 21/WG7, and started in 1987. The
goal (or at least a major goal) of the ODP standards is to enable interworking
of applications and sharing of data across computer networks spanning
organizational and national boundaries. This means that it shares with the URI
work the issues of scale, and the identification, discovery, and location of
resources. (By "discovery" I mean "which resource is relevant" and by
"location" I mean "where is the resource".) The ANSA project had started in
1985 with essentially the same goals, and so we were able to make substantial
contributions to RM-ODP to help get the work started.

The ODP documents are available from <URL:ftp://ftp.dstc.edu.au/pub/arch/RM-ODP
;type=d>, with (according to the README) mirrors at
<URL:ftp://ftp.gmd.de/documents/iso/RM-ODP;type=d> in Germany and
<URL:ftp://ftp.gte.com/pub/odp;type=d> in the USA. The README
<URL:ftp://ftp.dstc.edu.au/pub/arch/RM-ODP/README;type=a> gives a good summary
of what is in each document, and the current status of the various parts of
the work. RM-ODP Part 1 contains a lot of commentary and discussions of issues.

The "find a resource with these properties" question has been discussed here
recently in the context of URC services. It is also the primary purpose of the
"Trading Function", which has a separate standard that has recently reached CD
(Committee Draft) status. There are several groups working in this area: see
<URL:http://www.dstc.edu.au/interests/odp/trader/trader.html>. There are
several implementations of trading services, and it has recently been
suggested that there should be a project to construct a prototype to
demonstrate interworking between the various implementations, distributed
throughout the world.

There is now a close liason between ODP and OMG, so we are likely to see ODP
principles implemented using CORBA technology. One of our current activities
is to experiment with interworking between HTTP and CORBA, and the first
experiment has been to construct a way to invoke a CORBA-based trading service
from an HTTP-capable client.

I hoe that this has been of some interest, and not too long.

Regards,
Owen Rees <rtor@ansa.co.uk>
Information about ANSA is at <URL:http://www.ansa.co.uk/>.

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