Transcript meeting maker 2005 - ACT! Software Consulting Services

An Introduction to
Calendaring Standards –
How it all started
Patricia Egen, Patricia Egen Consulting
Interop Manager and Individual Member, Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium
[email protected]
Agenda
Standards – what are they
Standards Organizations
The IETF
Examples of Calendaring Needs
Calendar Standards
Where Next?
What are Standards?
•
Common Protocols, languages and terminology
• Who speaks first, and how, and when.
• Descriptions and definitions that all parties agree to use.
• Common definition of data
• This is a name, this is an address, this is a date, this is a time
zone, etc.
• A Way to make things work together
•
What do software standards try to solve?
• Interoperability, portability, data exchange
Here are some common standards you may (or may not) recognize:
AM
FM
HDTV
220V
120V
VHS
TCP
RJ11
ISBN
MPEG
GIF
BMP
LDAP
MIME
POP
SMTP
IMAP
ASCII
Analog
PCMCIA
SCSI
SQL
Standards also are….
Technical specifications or other criteria that a product, process or service
must meet. Standards provide information to consumers, manufacturers
and retailers, and enhance safety, reliability and performance of the
products, processes and services consumers use. Standards assure
consumers about reliability or other characteristics of services provided
in the marketplace. Standards also give consumers more choice by
allowing one firm's products to be substituted for, or combined with,
those of another.
To be credible, standards must have certain attributes:
•
•
•
•
their development must be overseen by a recognized body
the development process must be open to input from all interested parties
the resulting standards must be documented and publicly available
there is usually a method for monitoring and verifying that organizations
are complying with standards.
Source: http://strategies.ic.gc.ca/SSG/ca01579e.html
An example of How Standards Affect You –
World Power Standards
Three phase rules supreme
In almost all areas, power is generated and distributed as a three
phase supply. Only the voltage, frequency, and end presentation
differ. Further than that, the world breaks down into two camps,
which are basically:
Single phase
voltage
115V
230V
Three phase
voltage
208V
415V
Examples where used
USA, Canada, Hawaii
Europe, Australia, New Zealand
This means when you travel overseas or vice versa, you need to carry
adaptors to manage voltage and end presentation (the plugs). It’s
the same with calendar products today. Just replace interfaces and
underlying code with voltage and end presentation. In many cases,
you can’t even get them to talk together.
Some Key Standards Bodies
International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)
– Responsible for electrical, electronic and related Technologies
International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
– Responsible for some standards not covered by the IEC
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
– Not a standards group - strong role in technical standards setting,
and often works with the formal standards organizations
American National Standards Institute (ANSI)
Industry Groups
Internet Standards Groups
Internet Governing Bodies
-The Internet Society (ISOC) - concerned with growth and evolution of the worldwide
Internet, the way in which the Internet is and can be used, and with the social,
political, and technical issues which arise as a result. The ISOC Trustees are
responsible for approving appointments to the IAB from among the nominees
submitted by the IETF nominating committee.
–The IAB is a technical advisory group of the ISOC. It is chartered to provide
oversight of the architecture of the Internet and its protocols, and to serve, in the
context of the Internet standards process, as a body to which the decisions of the
IESG may be appealed. The IAB is responsible for approving appointments to the
IESG from among the nominees submitted by the IETF nominations committee.
–The IESG is responsible for technical management of IETF activities and the Internet
standards process. As part of the ISOC, it administers the process according to the
rules and procedures which have been ratified by the ISOC Trustees. The IESG is
directly responsible for the actions associated with entry into and movement along the
Internet "standards track," including final approval of specifications as Internet
Standards.
- The Internet Engineering Task Force
The IETF
The IETF has evolved to provide technical guidance and standards
development for the good of the Internet user community.
It is a unique and dynamic structure for the solving of technical problems.
Anyone can belong and proprietary interests are not entertained as
solutions. All standards are made freely available and working code is
the key to success.
–
–
–
–
–
Develops and maintains some commonly used Internet standards.
Proposals are discussed as Internet-Drafts in committees.
Working implementations are usually provided.
After Internet-Drafts are refined and rough consensus achieved, they may be
published as Requests for Comments (RFCs).
RFCs may become a proposed standard or may be published as informational
documents, best current practices guidelines, or experimental standards
The IETF is divided into eight functional areas.
–
–
Applications, Internet, IP: Next Generation, Network Management, Operational
Requirements, Routing, Security, Transport and User Services.
Each area has one or two area directors. The area directors, along with the
IETF/IESG Chair, form the IESG.
Source – http://www.iso.org
Standards Take Time
One author in a recent article stated the following regarding the speed of getting standards
through the IETF:
“One thing that becomes clear when you compare the IETF and the W3C is that the
IETF rarely considers anything a standard unless it has been in existence for a dozen
years and is widely implemented and working. This is an outgrowth of the Internet's
frontier days, when the most important thing was "rough consensus and working
code" and the best guiding principle available to a developer wishing to implement
an RFC was to "be conservative in what you do and liberal in what you accept from
others." The IETF strongly believes that minor differences between competing
implementations will eventually be smoothed out, at which time is it proper to
consider something a standard.” **
Now, the speed of the internet and the increasing number of private and public parties
developing products has made the process even slower. Reaching consensus is getting
harder and competitors are vying for market share. The push for standards needs to come
from the User community, not from the vendors. Money will always talk – even when it
comes to standards.
** Source: http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/00/08/index2a_page5.html?tw=commentary
Now Let’s Talk Calendars
Defining standards for calendars is complicated because
Calendaring and Scheduling is complicated.
It’s not as simple as defining an email envelope, addressing it,
storing it in post office and then mailing it, sending back a reply.
Calendars involve time and time zones, recurring events, alarms,
people, resources, events, searching times and resources on
more in more than one place, blocking out time, suggesting time
slots, and many, many more complexities that dwarf what email
standards had to accommodate.
The following slides will attempt to show just a few examples of
calendaring and scheduling needs.
Calendar Examples – Part 1
a] A doctor wishes to keep track of all his appointments.
Need: Read and manipulate one's own calendar with only one CUA.
b] A busy musician wants to maintain her schedule on an internet-based
agenda which she can access from anywhere.
Need: Read and manipulate one's own calendar.
c) A software development team wishes to share agenda information by using a
group scheduling product in order to more effectively schedule their time.
Need: Share calendar information with users using the same calendar service.
d] A teacher wants his students to be able to book time slot during his office
hours.
Need: Schedule calendar events and todos with users using the same calendar
service.
Calendar Examples – Part 2
e] A movie theatre wants to publish its schedule so that prospective
customers can easily access it.
Need: Share calendar information with users using other calendar
services, possibly from different vendors.
f] A social club wants to be able to organize events more effectively by
booking time with its members.
Need: Schedule calendar events and todos with users using other
calendar services, possibly from different vendors.
g) A corporation merges with another organization. Both have different
calendar and scheduling systems but the organization does not have time
to “merge” the two systems.
Need: The ability to interoperate between the two calendar systems
Standards for Calendars
In the previous examples, the first four calendar needs can
be satisfied through proprietary solutions, but the last three
cannot.
From these needs we can establish that protocols are
required for accessing information in a calendar store (where
calendar data resides), and for scheduling events and todos.
In addition these protocols require a data format for
representing calendar information.
Now it’s time to talk about calendaring standards.
Calendar Standards and
Drafts Today
Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification
(iCalendar) – RFC2445
iCalendar Transport-Independent Interoperability Protocol (iTIP) –
RFC2446
iCalendar Message-Based Interoperability Protocol (iMIP) –
RFC2447
Calendar Access Protocol (CAP) – now an Experimental RFC
CALDAV – in progress – not yet an RFC
iCalendar
iCalendar (iCAL) is the Language to be used in calendar events
or, in other words, it’s how you describe the data in your calendar
It provides data format for representing calendar information
which the other protocols can use. iCAL can also be used in
other contexts such as a drag and drop
format or an
export/import format.
All the other protocols depend on ICAL, so all elements of a
standards-based calendaring and scheduling systems will have
to interpret ICAL. It will be the heart of all calendaring efforts.
iTIP
ITIP is the scheduling protocol
ITIP describes the messages used to schedule calendar events.
These messages are represented in ICAL, and have semantics
(terminology) that include such things as being an invitation to a
meeting, an acceptance of an invitation or the assignation of a task.
ITIP messages are used in the scheduling work flow, where users
exchange messages in order to organize things such as events and
todos. CUAs generate and interpret ITIP messages at the direction
of the calendar user.
With ITIP one can create, modify, delete, reply to, counter, and
decline counters to, the various ICAL components. Furthermore,
one can also request the freebusy (open or busy) time of other
people.
iMIP
IMIP is a definition that tells how to attach or bind calendar
objects to email. It uses the iTIP protocol to define the calendar
objects and MIME to transport the mail.
While iMIP tells how to send a calendar object over email, CAP
will provide a second real-time binding of ITIP, allowing CUAs
(calendar programs and interfaces) to perform calendar
management as well as scheduling over a single connection. In
other words, direct into a calendar server instead of using email.
CAP – Calendar
Access Protocol
CAP is the calendar management protocol. It describes the messages
used to manage calendars. These messages are represented in ICAL, and
have semantics (or interpretations) such as a search for data, data in
response to a search or the creation of a meeting.
CAP describes the messages used to manage calendars on a calendar
store. A calendar store is a data storehouse of a calendar service. A
calendar service may have several calendar stores, and each store may
contain several calendars, as well as properties and components outside
of the calendars.
These messages are represented in ICAL. With these messages one can
do the operations in ITIP and other operations relating to a calendar
store. These operations include, search, creating calendars, specifying
calendar properties, and being able to specify access rights to one's
calendars.
CAP also provides a real-time binding for the calendar management
messages.
Why is CAP Important
There are two main methodologies for communicating iCalendar
objects:
1. Use a store-and-forward mechanism such as email or
2. Via an on-the-wire mechanism (directly connected,
however briefly), using the CAP specification.
Here’s just one example of needing CAP or CALDAV.
If I have a mobile device such as a PDA or a phone, I don’t
necessarily want to send an email to that device with calendar
data. Rather, I’d like to have it communicate directly with my
calendar server (or store). That’s item #2 above!
CAP was the next big thing – however, it stalled. CALDAV is now
gaining momentum.
What is CalDav?
Webdav is document versioning on the web.
CalDav is using HTTP and WebDAV as a basis for a
calendaring server
It is a standard way of modeling calendar data in
WebDAV, plus some additional features to make
calendar access work well.
There are several organizations who have developed
CalDav servers and clients. This protocol has a good
chance of actually being implemented.
It is currently in the development phase as an IETF
draft.
Comparing Calendar to
Email Standards
RFC822 is the master rule book for describing an email
object.
RFC822 in email = iCAL in Calendaring
POP or Post Office Protocol is the standard that describes
repositories for storage and further transmission of email
objects.
POP/IMAP in email = CAP in calendaring
iMIP uses RFC822 since iMIP defines how to send a
calendar object
RFC822 is a wrapper for email = iTIP is a wrapper for
calendaring objects
Subselect and enter
title here
Subselect and
enter title here
Calendar Client A
uses ICalendar
based syntax
Calendar Client B
uses MIME based
syntax
CAP Protoco
l
Mary at
Company
A
Company A
calendar
store
IP
IT
IP
IM
CAP
Protocol
CAP l
oco
Prot
Company B
calendar
store
Radio
tower
John has no calendar
product or uses one
that can only
interoperate with email
Company B
Various other
calendar store
calendar
stores
Satellite dish
Mary and Bob want to set up a meeting. Each one uses a
different calendar product. They also want to invite other groups
that may use different types of calendar products or no calendar
product at all. Mary initiates the process.
Bob at
Company
B
Who Needs Calendar Standards?
 Anyone wanting to share their calendar with others
 Anyone wanting to schedule meetings within and without their
organization
 Anyone wanting to schedule having an appliance repaired or getting
milk delivered every Monday
 Anyone wanting to schedule Just in Time delivery of parts
 Anyone wanting to have calendar entries and alarms sent to their phone
and handheld devices
 Anyone who wants to stay on time.
 EVERYONE!
Questions?