20080221 arb minutes
Architecture Board Conference Call: February 21, 2008
Attending: Mead Walker, Jane Curry, Grahame Grieve, Cecil Lynch, Abdul-Malik Shakir, Yongjian Bao
ARB needs to work our decision making procedures.
Further discussion on the GE negative, publishing, “gaps” We did not discuss the GE negative since that was settled at the last meeting. The derivative issue was how to best address the publishing problems that the GE negative raised. Grahame noted that his suggestion to stop balloting until we resolved this somewhat tongue in cheek. He also was not sure this issue had actually been brought to the committee. Grahame noted that one aspect of this was that there is no good way to raise, in balloting, issues of overall structure and of publishing. Perhaps the ARB can offer some perspective on how to allow these issues to be raised by balloters. There is a gap between what the user sees (i.e. no concept domain), and what the committee can actually do (get the concept domain approved through harmonization). Jane notes that some of the causes of this gap are tooling issues. She notes the fragility of the infrastructure. She notes inadequate quality assurance to check whether what shows in the ballot reflects the intent of the committee. The quality checks then come in as ballot comments. Jane suggests that we recommend that, given the current infrastructure, we state that, if you have not done a through technical review, you cannot ballot, or if a defect is noted, you cannot move forward. Jongjian asks if this is a tooling issue or a committee issue. Jane notes it is a tooling issue. Abdul-Malik notes, that, if a balloter should find that a ballot inconsistent or incomplete, that negative should stand until the problem is resolved. Jane notes that, therefore, the committee is responsible during the preview period, for following all the links that are cited. Grahame thinks this reverses the vote of last week, when, he feels, we said that once the concept domain was through harmonization, the committee could call the negative not-related.
Discussion of ARB mission and scope Yongjian asks whether the mission refers to the architecture of HL7 products. Jane thinks so. Abdul-Malik does not understand “means by which products can be integrated with local solutions”. Jane thinks this is appropriate. Grahame is worried about “unambiguous integration” He thinks it puts too much responsibility on HL7 to ensure the integration. He agrees with Jane that our focus should be on showing how our architecture can integrate with your architecture. “that defines how these work products relate to other standards and components of local implementations” We like the rephrased version. Cecil says it is important to note that HL7 can be used to link with components of non-HL7 architectures. Jane asks to what degree we consider the post publication life of the products. Jane adds “methodology by which these work products are produced and managed through their life cycle”. Grahame suggests that the ARB scope does not extend to enforcing violations of defined criteria. Jane thinks that governance includes how things are to be managed in implementations. Mead, Abdul-Malik think the responsibility is limited to stating which responsibilities are within HL7 and which are not. Abdul-Malik was comfortable before adding the clause related to enabling interoperability. He would prefer leaving this out. He is not sure all our products are involved with ensuring interoperability. Jane thinks it is important, because it allows people to know what they are going to get. The revised mission and scope (up to the first ::) is accepted as a draft to go forward. We ask other ARBers to use this as a starting point, and, if desired, suggest amendments and/or additions.
Next call: Grahame suggests taking up procedural issues: co-chair, email voting, quorum Tony Julian
