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Standards
Standards are essential to networking
and data exchange (sharing) between software components.
Movement towards this latter goal has been happening
for many years and Microsoft focused the debate by gradually
introducing the means for data to be exchanged between
applications but with the catch that the data could
only be shared if the applications were running on the
Microsoft platform.
Since 1989 the Object Management Group
(OMG) has been coordinating the efforts of its members
towards defining an Object Management Architecture (OMA)
and standards for distributed applications, distributed
services and common facilities involving a set of standard
interfaces for inter-operable software components.
Today the standards effort has moved
on to the Internet and the World Wide Web. The take
up of interest in the Internet presented the opportunity
for a proliferation of incompatible solutions to such
everyday problems as finding information, paying for
services, authentication and authorisation. Customarily,
standardisation bodies are slow to start up and resolve
issues principally because of the lead-time taken to
find the right people, get them interested in solving
the problems and then putting them in contact with each
other.
As is to be expected, many industry
vendors attempt to hijack such a process or shape the
new standards to their existing technologies for obvious
financial advantages. In this regard the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF) has not experienced the same problems
that the ISO had when specifying the OSI (Open Systems
Interconnection) suite of standards which was the first
internationally recognised effort to codify what constitutes
"openness" for systems networking. TCP/IP
only evolved into an OSI alternative as a result of
the length of time taken for OSI implementations to
come to market.
Any discussion about interfaces leads
us to the current state of vertical business domain
interface standards, eg. accounting, restaurants, telephony,
publishing, travel and so on. Each domain of knowledge
requires a consistent set of semantics and data types
for the exchange of information. There are various industry
initiatives to define such standards but it has proved
to be very difficult to get standards to "stick"
at this level of interaction - probably because the
parties are busy pursuing their own commercial advantage
(as they see it in the short term). There are some interesting
attempts at standardising Internet services using standard
and extended XML.
Forge has a long association with Telecommunications
Standards, in particular the ITU standards, striving
to deliver practical management systems based on the
principles outlined in the Telecommunication Management
Network (TMN) series of documents M.3XXX. The TMN standards
are evolutionary rather than revolutionary and working
parties are in the process of evolving the existing
body of work based on OSI System Management to a distributed
framework based on the RM-ODP. A number of ITU documents
support this observation including X.703 and a number
of the G.805-XX documents. Forge development infrastructure
has evolved with these considerations in mind.
For a number of years, in concert with
this effort, the TeleManagement Forum has supported
the view that Service level systems should be based
on CORBA. This is a practical attempt at implementing
RM-ODP while retaining the existing efforts based on
GDMO/OSI already under development in many large Telco
networks. The hardest issue has always been the interface
between the Service view based on CORBA (OMG) and the
Network views based on OSI System Management (SM). Through
many practical developments at Forge this key issue
has been addressed.
There is currently in train a process
by which the existing body of work based on OSI-SM is
evolving towards a generalisation independent of both
Service and Network philosophies. This clears the way
for a unified approach based on Open Distributed Management
Architecture as identified in X.703.
Forge has built on its practical experiences
to realise the goals of the TeleManagement Forum. The
TeleManagement Forum grew out of a need to reconcile
the lofty ideals of TMN & OSI-SM and the practicalities
of the market. It has attempted to guide adoption of
the principles of TMN and OSI-SM including the GDMO
models as an evolutionary process. In particular it
has guided the well-focused, incremental adoption of
the standards. The guidance is based on identifying
key driver/trends and providing road maps to minimise
the risks associated with adoption of new techniques,
infrastructure and principles.
The Forge design and implementation
of network management systems is based on OSI System
Management with particular emphasis on the Open Distributed
Processing aspect of System Management. A number of
the components required to support the Open Distributed
Management Architecture (ODMA) (Ref: X.703) have been
designed and built by Forge.
These Forge ODMA components have been
refined from practical experience gained in the implementation
of TINA
(Telecommunications Information Networking Architecture)
systems and associated infrastructures.
An important critical component of this
TINA infrastructure development was the Directory Service
component based on X.500, this development drew on the
practical experience of Forge staff in the implementation
of X.500 and X.400 systems.
The ODMA represents the convergence
of IT Systems Management and the telecommunications
Wide Area Communications Management. Forge's expertise
in systems management is highly relevant to this new
convergence and a tremendous asset. Many of the issues
raised by this convergence will be resolved when management
tools leverage the Directory Services costs effectively.
Forge maintains a particular focus upon potential approaches
in this is area.
The Java milieu has its own set of standards
that are constantly evolving. Forge seeks to conform
to these standards as appropriate in its development
and is constantly evaluating them. An example of our
commitment to these standards is the implementation
of a Java security provider that conforms to the JCE
(Java Crypto Extensions).
Forge is also pursuing and monitoring
such Java initiatives as the J2EE and its core component
of Enterprise Java Beans, building it into an implementation
of the Authorize product. Where Forge sees that a Java
standard is superior to the alternatives then that mechanism
is used. Examples of this are the RMI (Remote Method
Invocation) and the JMS (Java Message System) where
Forge is using these in preference to CORBA for internal
communications between certain of its components.
The following organisations are principal
players in the development of standards for networking,
the Internet and telecommunications.
The Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF) http://www.ietf.org/
is a self-organised group that contributes to the Internet's
engineering and standards development. It comprises
many working groups focused on specific technology areas.
A nominating committee of IETF members nominates members
to the Internet Architecture Board. (IAB) and the Internet
Engineering Steering Group (IESG).
The Internet Society (ISOC) is a professional
society concerned with the growth and evolution of the
Internet, the way it's used and associated social, political
and technical issues. The ISOC board of trustees approves
appointments to the IAB from a list of nominees submitted
by the IETF. ISOC-AU is the Australian chapter of the
Internet Society. Several Forge staff were founder members
of this branch. http://www.isoc-au.org.au/
The Internet Architecture Board (IAB)
is a technical advisory group of ISOC and oversees Internet
architecture and protocols. It acts as an appeals body
for decisions of the IESG. The IAB approves appointments
to the IESG from the IETF's nominees. http://www.iab.org/
The Internet Engineering Steering Group
(IESG) is part of the ISOC and manages the Internet
standards process and technical activities for the IETF.
It follows rules and procedures set by the ISOC trustees.
The IESG oversees the progress and final approval of
standards proposals. http://www.ietf.org/
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
is based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's
Laboratory for Computer Science and is involved with
developing various common standards for the Web. http://www.w3c.org/
The International Organization for Standardization
(ISO) is a voluntary body of national standardization
organizations. It accepts and certifies international
standards for telecommunications. ANSI is a member of
ISO. http://www.iso.org/
The International Telecommunication
Union (ITU) is the United Nations specialised agency
dealing with telecommunications. At present there are
164 member countries. One of its previous bodies was
the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative
Committee, CCITT, which is now after an organisational
reorganisation of ITU called ITU-T (Telecommunication
Standardisation Sector). There is a combined ISO/ITU-T
initiative defining a Reference Model for Open Distributed
Processing (RM-ODP). http://www.itu.int/
The Telecommunications Information Networking
Architecture Consortium (TINA-C) was a worldwide consortium
formed by network operators, telecommunications and
computer equipment suppliers. It aims to define and
validate an open architecture for telecommunications
services in the emerging broadband, multi-media and
Internet era.
The European Committee for Standardisation
(CEN) adopts international and national standards with
the effect that all member bodies have to withdraw contradicting
material. http://www.cenorm.be/
The European Telecommunications Standards
Institute (ETSI) http://www.etsi.org/
was set up in 1988 to set standards for Europe in telecommunications
and, in cooperation with the European Broadcasting Union
(EBU) and CEN/CENELEC (office information), is a forum
which brings together network operators, service providers,
manufacturers, administrations, users and the research
community. http://www.ebu.ch/
The Object Management Group (OMG) is
a consortium dedicated to creating industry standards
for commercially available object-oriented systems,
focusing on Distributed Applications, Distributed Services
and Common Facilities. http://www.omg.org/
The American National Standards Institute
(ANSI) coordinates the U.S. voluntary consensus standards
system and approves American national data processing
and communications standards. ANSI does not develop
standards. http://www.ansi.org/
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