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OMG Finance DTF - Salt Lake City Meeting Minutes
Dear fellow OMG colleagues,
Please find enclosed the meeting minutes of the OMG's Financial Domain
Task Force's Salt Lake City Meeting. Many thanks to Mr Tor Neple of
SINTEF, Norway, for assisting in the thankless job of assisting with the
minute taking. If you have any ideas for agenda items, please forward them
to us and we're really looking forward to seeing you all again in our home
town of Manchester.
best regards,
Jack Hassall/John Eaton/Rich Limieux
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OMG Financial Domain Task Force Meeting
The Wyndham Hotel, 215 W. South Temple
Salt Lake City, UT 84101 USA
February 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th, 1998
Chair: Jack Hassall/John Eaton/Rich Limieux
Minutes by: Tor Neple, Jack Hassall
Meeting Goals: Updates on Currency, Party Management, Product/Agreement
and GL RFPs, TF to recommend issuance of Risk Management
RFI, Identify, draft and revise future RFPs, informal
meeting(s) with other DTFs, continued research into
formation of Banking/Securities WG and more.
Attendees:
Jack Hassall Stanford Software
John Eaton Stanford Software
Richard Limieux Travelers
Steven C. Wolfe Merrill Lynch
Kevin Tyson Enterprise Engineering Associates
Milo Chan J.P. Morgan
Dermot F. Grady J.P. Morgan
Barry Glasgow MetLife
Susan Iles Zurich Insurance Group
Pervinder Johar State Street Bank & Trust
Frank Cornet Delta Lloyd
Markus Pilz Daimler-Benz AG
Timothy Resch Nationwide Financial Services
Adrian von Aesch Zurich Insurance
Tor Neple SINTEF
Ron Zahavi Concept 5 Technologies
Dan Andrus Novell
Amund Aarsten Economica
Ole Petter Ovre Economica
Roger Barnett Real Objects Limited
Cory B. Casanave Data Access
Tom Digre Data Access
Robert Mickley Cyborg Systems
Peter Herzum SSA
Rudolf M. Riess Digital Equipment
Alan L. Pope QDS
Kenneth McCoy Tandem
Eric Aranow Context Consulting
Brian Breton Gradient Technologies
Toshiyuki Ono Hitachi
Makoto Oya Hitachi
Narizumi Shindo Hitachi
Verlyn M. Johnson IBM
Jeff Mischkinsky Visigenic
Vilhelm Rosenqvist NCR
Steven Rydzewski PolySystems
Colin T. Scott Andersen Consulting
Hidenori Suzuki Nihon Unisys
Jon Siegel OMG
Monday, February the 9th
------------------------
Rich Limieux and Jack Hassall made presentations for new Finance DTF
members. There were approximately 30 delegates in attendance. It had been
previously agreed in New Jersey that at all future meetings, the FDTF
should run a new member orientation meeting on Monday mornings and that
this was highly recommended for delegates attending an OMG Finance DTF
Meeting for the first time. The new FDTF member orientation took place at
9:00 am, augmenting the more general OMG briefing that was held at 8:00
am. The new FDTF member orientation finished at 12:00 for lunch.
At 1:00 pm there was an informal meeting and general discussion of the
FDTF's Insurance Working Group in preparation for the FDTF Plenary on
February the 10th. In parallel, assorted members of the Finance DTF
attended the OMG Architecture Board as has become normal practice.
Tuesday, February 10th - OMG's Finance DTF Plenary Meeting
----------------------------------------------------------
Jack and John opened the meeting and welcomed the delegates. First on the
agenda was to appoint a person to be responsible for taking the meeting
minutes and agree the agenda. Tor Neple of SINTEF, Norway kindly
volunteered. Jack briefed the members on the proposed agenda and asked if
there were any last minute alterations or suggestions. There were no
objections to the agenda.
Jack said that there was an RFI for Risk Management that has been up on
the server for a long time, and it is a meeting goal to vote for issuance
by the DTC in this meeting. The RFI had been drafted by the FDTF's Risk
Management Working Group which is led by the FDTF's Australian Regional
co-ordinator, Doug Moss of Macquarrie Bank. Jack said that everybody had
been notified about this, as had been agreed at the New Jersey meeting.
Roger Barnett of Real Objects moves that the FDTF recommends issuance of
the Risk management RFI by the DTC. The motion is seconded by Steve
Rydzewsky of Poly Systems. Rob Mickley of Cyborg Systems calls for a
white-ballot. No objections, motion passes.
Moving back to the agenda, Jack said that Jon Siegel of OMG had said that
the FDTF should be aware of what is going on in the BOF area. There is to
be a presentation of the revised combined submission on the BOCA, in the
afternoon by Dave Zenie, co-chair of the BODTF.
Jack said that there were also to be presentations on the FDTF Currency
RFP Revised Submissons (RFP1). Rob Mickley of Cyborg Systems said that the
two principal submissions were now a single, combined submission and moved
that the revised submission date for the Currency RFP should be moved to
three weeks before the Manchester meeting, and that this date this is
March 9th. Verlyn Johnson of IBM seconded the motion and white ballot was
called by Roger Barnett of Real objects. No objections, motion passes.
Jack said that an RFP for a General Ledger Facility had been issued by the
DTC at the New Jersey meeting and that although 5 LOIs had been received
by the OMG in order to attract even more there was general agreement that
the LOI deadline should perhaps be extended. The key RFP requirement is to
evaluate proposals that provide for interoperability with General Ledger
systems. The general ledger is an essential part of the accounting world.
Rich Limieux of Travellers Group moves that the Letter Of Intent deadline
for the General Ledger Facility should be moved to three weeks before the
Manchester meeting and this date is March 9th. The motion was seconded by
Roger Barnett of Real Objects and white ballot was called by Steve
Rydzewsky of Poly systems. No objections, motion passes.
Jack gave a general update on OMG's FDTF and some of the various liaison
activities they had undertaken since the New Jersey meeting.
Jack and John had recently met in London with Senior Level Management of
the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) based on a number
of telephone conversations and emails and the meeting had been very
successful. The committee has defined a precise set of semantic
descriptions that cover non-technology standards for accounting world wide
but the IASC also will cover certain aspects of securities.
The most recent standard from this group is the International Accounting
Standard (IAS) version 1 which is for the presentation of general purpose
financial statements and this standard has been refactored and replaces
several earlier, related standards issued by the IASC. Jack said that in
their discussions, a point had been raised with respect to the fact that
the various IASC standards have no references as to how these standards
may be supported by general purpose information systems in a very
heterogeneous world and that the OMG, and the OMG's FDTF in particular may
prove to be the ideal forum for this vision. Jack said that they had also
arranged for a visit to IASC by OMG's UK Representative and that this had
already taken place. The IASC were very interested, and it is the
intention to examine the possibilities for further interaction between the
IASC, the OMG and the FDTF in the very near future.
Jack also said that in a more general sense, there were many other
opportunities forthcoming to increase both awareness and participation in
the FDTF and that we would have representation at Object World London,
Germany and Japan, Patterns '98 in London as well as FinOOTS in the USA
and the Financial Information Systems Conference in the UK.
Jack and John said that they were looking forward to the OMG meeting in
their home town of Manchester. It was interesting that the first digitally
stored computer program had been "invented" in Manchester in 1948, some 50
years previous to the problems that were being addressed by the OMG.
Jack said that Professor Tom Kilburn, the surviving member of the team
which invented it has accepted an invitation from the OMG to make a
presentation about "how they did it". Jack said that if anyone was
interested, they should check out http://www.computer50.org and that an
OMG TC meeting in this place some 50 years after this was extremely
poignant. Professor Kilburn is the "world's first computer programmer".
Jack said that there was no-one present from the Calendar Working Group
but that he had had an update last night from Dan Andrus of Novell who had
been the leader up to this point. Dan has been moved from his previous
department to another and was unfortunately unable to continue with his
excellent work and therefore, we need to find a replacement. The Calendar
RFP is based on the fact that Financial Services organisations required a
financially oriented calendar. This need had been identified by the FDTF
at its first meeting in Washington DC. There had been no calendaring
facility in the Common Facilities Architecture and after a great deal of
discussion, it had been agreed that the RFP should be recommended for
issuance by the DTC by the BODTF. It is very important that whoever this
person is, brings back information to the FDTF. Jack said that in their
discussions, Dan had mentioned that the IETF had expressed some concerns
about the OMG initiative. It was our understanding that we were asking for
Client interfaces and therefore there was no conflict.
Jack and John asked Rich Limieux to brief the attendees on the current
status of the Party Management RFP. Rich said that the RFP had been issued
in June and that the LOI and submission dates had been moved at the last
meeting. The new LOI date is 15th of January 1998 and the initial
submission date has been moved to March the 9th, three weeks prior to the
Manchester meeting. The voting list for Party Management closes on May
1st. Presentations on the initial submissions will be given at the next
meeting and we need to establish an evaluation team. Rich suggested that 3
or 4 people that can do this at the next meeting. Jack and John raised the
issue of controlling growth. As the FDTF puts out more RFPs, more
submissions will have to be evaluated. It is important that the
evaluation process does not "clog" the process.
To facilitate evaluations, Email and general discussion could take place
between meetings. The evaluation of Party is among the first technology
evaluations conducted by the FDTF and it was likely that the process may
have to be adjusted as we progress. There is no special membership level
required in order to be able to participate in the evaluation but voting
right are limited for any OMG member below the "influencing level".
Jack asked Rich to give the group an update on "Product". Rich said that
this was initially a RFP for both Product AND Agreement, but had been
split into two candidate RFPs, one for product and one for agreement.
A third RFP that is on its way is likely to be one for Investments
Management. A meeting goal for this week was to define boundaries between
these domain specific facilities, but it is unlikely that agreement and
complete consensus will be reached this week. These will probably be very
basic reference points and that submitters should define their own
boundaries.
Jack pointed out that boundaries in the real world change constantly,
so it is important to have flexibility. Rich said that after the basic
boundaries had been agreed that the RFPs could be put into a proper
sequence. Rich said that there was another RFP on the horizon that will
handle "things" although at this time, there was some uncertainty as to
how to define this and we weren't going to get into this now ! There has
also been a discussion around financial instruments. Jack said that this
had been identified a long time ago and was the subject of a great deal of
international controversy. Jack said that he thought that the IASC had an
interest in this, but there were many other sources of information
regarding "financial instrument".
Jack said that there were originally going to be two presentations on
Currency, one from Cyborg/SSA and one from IBM/OTI. Verlyn Johnson of IBM,
informed the FDTF that the submissions have now been worked down to one
combined submission, but it has not yet been put on the server.
This because the work is not yet complete but the submitters feel that
they are approximately 95% finished. A presentation on the combined
submission was given by Rob Mickley of Cyborg Systems. Attendees were
given handouts for the presentation, and the submission document is
available at the following web-site: www.cyborg.com/OMG/OMG.htm
Jack made an informal motion on behalf of the FDTF to express thanks to
the Currency Working Group for the extremely hard work and fine job that
they had done, and this was greeted with resounding applause.
Jack said that we were ahead of schedule and after general discussion
about utilisation of the next 90 minutes there was general agreement that
breakouts and other business should commence straight away. Jack added
that it is very important that the various FDTF Working Groups provide
minutes to the Chairs so that they in turn can finish the overall FDTF
minutes within the three week deadline. Jack adjourned the FDTF Plenary
Meeting and those interested in the various activities defined in the
agenda should take the appropriate course of action.
02:00 pm
A presentation on the OMG Business Object Component Architecture (BOCA)
was held by Dave Zenie of NIIIP. The CDL spec and the BOCA meta-data model
will be voted on this week, while the interoperability specification
probably will not be voted on until the next meeting. Questions were
raised regarding domain specifications that are not based on the BOCA.
There was no clear answer to this question at this stage.
Wednesday, February 11th, 1998
------------------------------
OMG's Finance DTF Working Groups break out - 09:00 am - 05:00 pm
o Currency Working Group - breakout meeting
o Insurance Working Group - breakout meeting
o Product/Agreement Working Group - breakout meeting
o Calendar Working Group - breakout meeting
o Risk Management Working Group - breakout meeting
o Accounting Working Group - breakout meeting
Thursday, February 12th
-----------------------
09:00 am OMG Finance DTF Plenary re-convenes.
o Currency Working Group - Status report to FDTF
o Insurance Working Group - Status report to FDTF
o Product/Agreement Working Group - Status report to FDTF
o Calendar Working Group - Status report to FDTF
o Risk Management Working Group - Status report to FDTF
o Accounting Working Group - Status report to FDTF
Jack said that after an number of consultations with various people,
moving the LOI deadline for the GL facility alone was not enough and that
the other dates in the sequence should be moved so as to be practicable.
Rich Limieux of Travelers group moves to extend all other dates in
proportion to the new LOI date. Amund Aarsten of Economica seconds and
white ballot is called by Steve Rydzewsky of Poly systems. No objections,
motion passes. The new dates are: LOIs: March 9th, Initial Submissions:
July 3rd, Voting list closure: July 10th, Revised Submissions: Oct 16th
The meeting was adjourned at 05:00 pm
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