Minutes of Matml Coordination Committee

6

MINUTES OF MatML COORDINATION COMMITTEE

October 20, 2004

Delaware D Room, Hyatt Hotel, Columbus, OH

The MatML Coordination Committee met at 5:30 PM in the Delaware D Room of the Hyatt Hotel in Columbus, OH, following the MatML Session at the ASM International Materials Solutions Conference. Attendees included the following:

Laura Bartolo, Chair – Kent State Univ.*

Debbie Mies – MSC Software*

Fran Cverna – ASM International*

Sally Fahrenholz-Mann- ASM International#

Hubert Lobo – Matereality*

Theresa Nelson – ASM International

Will Marsden – Granta Design

Craig Seymour – Granta Design*#**

Aparna Varde – Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Steve Weiss – ASM International*

Notes: * - MatML Coordination Committee Member

# - MatML Schema Working Group Member

** - OASIS Technical Committee Member

The agenda for the ASM-hosted dinner meeting is attached.

Chair Laura Bartolo welcomed the attendees, and self-introductions followed.

Discussion of the role of ASM International: Steve Weiss, Director of Information Technology, presented elements of ASM International’s strategic plan and illustrated the link to activities such as the development of an extensible materials markup language. He then presented ASM’s MatML Initiative that would be responsive to their plan, the main points of which included:

·  Establish and take responsibility for an ASM MatML Committee

·  Create a portal that will refer to others to optimize the acquisition of materials data

·  Support MatML as an ASM Committee – The decisions of the committee would be of the committee membership – not necessarily ASM’s initiative

·  We must start by engaging people who will push the technology.

·  Gain OASIS acceptance to aid in promoting the initiative.

Weiss also noted that the ASM Board of Trustees has approved this Initiative and provided some funding to support it. There was then discussion of how funds might be used. The following ideas were discussed:

·  Keep the MatML website current and useful (already undertaken by ASM)

·  Optimize/accelerate the MatML schema development?

·  Speed the OASIS specification development; ASM needs membership with OASIS. OASIS is a standardization body for XML markup languages. Perhaps may want a parallel ASTM standard.

·  Consider resources, such as a full-time position,needed for MatML promotion.

·  Develop an e-newsletter (already initiated by ASM)

The ASM International report received praise and support. It was agreed that a real corporate initiative will be required, and it should now start with Version 3.1 of the MatML schema

Schema Development Working Group: In the absence of Working Group Chair Doug Fleming or anyone else from ACI/MatWeb, there was a general discussion of the status, particularly future needs for MatML schema development beyond Version 3.1, the final version for which was put in place on the website recently. Among the principal points made:

·  There was general agreement that version 3.1 needs more testing before commercialization.

·  Kent State University (OH) is trying it out with students using materials processing and transport phenomena data, with conclusions to be drawn next semester. ASM is working with Kent on this evaluation.

·  Several attendees, including Hubert Lobo, stressed the need for property and/or material name standardization. The lack of such led to a failure of implementation by Algor (see Trials and Evaluations below).

·  Extension of the schema to include quench data was proposed by Aparna Verda, who will submit QuenchML to the Schema Development group for consideration.

OASIS Specification Development: In the absence of OASIS Technical Committee Chair Brett Johanson, there was some discussion of this subject. Johanson plans to submit Version 3.1 to OASIS as a draft specification, subject to further revision as needed before becoming a standard. This submission has been delayed by the continued revisions and testing of Version 3.1. (JGK Note: Johanson has confirmed to Kaufman his commitment to move the OASIS draft spec forward promptly. Also there is no need to have Version 3.1 “perfect” before submitting it as a draft to OASIS as it is subject indefinitely to revisions as needs require before becoming a standard. Also Johanson has commented to JGK that the task of putting MatML into the OASIS format may be more challenging that originally hoped, requiring some additional staff support.)

At least three members of the MatML CC are members of OASIS (Johanson, Seymour, and Kaufman), and ASM should also be a member; other members are solicited as corporate or individual members.

It was noted that perhaps there should be an ASTM standard for MatML as well, but there was agreement that the OASIS spec was first priority.

MatML Website Updating and Maintenance: ASM International has assumed the role of host and maintainer of the MatML website and, thanks to the hard work of Craig Seymour, Fran Cverna, and Leslie Chom among others, completed a much needed full update about October 15. New items included on the website is an e-newsletter capability and a forum for discussion and suggestions related to MatML.

Suggestions for additions to the website:

·  Post a list of useful tools to be used with MatML.

·  Include a MatML Newsletter

·  Include the minutes of MatML meetings

Reports on Trials and Evaluations:

·  MMPDS/MIL-HDBK-5 - Jim Pillars, Boeing, heads a materials markup language working group within MMPDS. Thus far he has met opposition, seemingly at least partly because the MMPDS/Mil-HDBK-5 committee is suspicious as to who is to make money with MatML. Can we brainstorm how to move that along that sooner, e.g., send out email to a mailing list?

·  Westmoreland Mechanical Testing and Research (WMTR; Jim Rossi, VP; Youngstown, PA) has been trying to encourage the use of MatML with their customers like Boeing with little success so far. Perhaps and meeting there, brainstorming with WMTR staff and getting their feedback would be worthwhile.

·  Algor, a computer software company that provides services for mechanical and civil engineers in a variety of big industries, did an implementation of MatML that they dropped because they decided it was still insufficient – they want standardization of property names. Conclusion: we need to get more people using MatML before it can be refined further.

·  There is a need for XSLT transformation using a commonly used set of tools for XML development such as Altova XML Spy

Discussion of Additional Opportunities for Trials:

·  Through the application to FEA; will MatML markup transfer smoothly for them? Develop a list of all FEA products that can communicate via MatML.

·  Collaborate with the semiconductor industry, which has their own DTD.

·  Check with SimOffice to see if they can import MatML. SimOffice™ (a MSC product) is a stand-alone environment in which engineers can build, test, review, and improve their designs. SimOffice gives product development engineers, the shared technologies they need to assess product performance and accelerate innovation. SimOffice is being architected as a natural evolution of the VPD tools and techniques our customers use today. SimOffice includes MSC.Software's major product families, MSC.Nastran™, MSC.Patran™, MSC.ADAMS®, MSC.EASY5™, MSC.Marc®, MSC.SOFY™, MSC.Dytran® and other stand-alone applications that are accessible through the MSC.MasterKey™ licensing system.

·  Collect more materials information samples with which to try MatML:

o  MatDB data from Nelson

o  Micrographs from Cverna

o  Quench data from Varde

Discussion of Better Means of Educating and Getting Feedback on MatML:

·  Create a list of contacts of people potentially interested in MatML. Find out why they are interested? Email to people who access the site – immediate response when they sign up. Try to understand their interests and needs.

·  Submit papers/session for an XML Conference. XML Conferences are populated by people from industry. OASIS sponsors this conference. Need someone to speak at the conference.

·  Submit presentations at future NSF-sponsored workshops on scientific markup languages.

·  There is a need for “White Papers” that address several major issues or concerns:

o  The economics of using MatML; how does it save in the long run?

o  Success stories

o  Debatable issues

o  Taxonomy debate

·  Submit a “call for papers” on the website and get commitments; Fran offered to provide a list of potential subjects. Try to publish the proceedings.

·  Member companies/organizations post a MatML logo at their site?

Discussion of Future Committee Operations:

·  ASM is willing to assume responsibility for committee.

·  Have a Committee teleconference bi-monthly.

·  Set a date, location for next face-to-face meeting.

·  Formalize a committee process for updating the website. Cverna will send out the revisions. If it is unanimous approval or no negative viewpoints, then the change would be implemented; otherwise wait for the next committee meeting.

·  Establish a marketing strategy.

Specific Action Items Noted:

·  ASM can assume the responsibility for the MatML Coordination Committee subject to endorsement by the CC members.

·  Bartolo will communicate with Fleming of ACI/MatWeb to check his ability to continue heading the Schema Development Working Group. (JGK note: Fleming has a new job in which he does not work with markup languages, and has suggested Dale Kipp replace him as ACI/MatWeb representative on the Committee)

·  Mies volunteered to create a prototype of XLST to convert MatML to Nastran.

·  Seymour will try to provide an example of a data transfer between Granta and MSC Software.

·  Marsden and Fahrenholz-Mann will reword the email that is sent in response to signing up for the email newsletter from the web site.

·  Steve Weiss will pursue ASM membership with OASIS.

·  Fahrenholz-Mann and Cverna will write up a Call for white papers to post on the web site. The 2 starting topics discussed were "Pros and Cons of using a set taxonomy/vocabulary for properties, units, and materials in MatML" and "XML software tools that have application in the use of MatML."

·  Cverna will work with Chom at ASM to post the minutes on the website once the minutes are finalized.

·  Seymour, Johanson, and Kaufman will verify that we would not be jeopardizing the OASIS effort if we started the process with the current Version 3.1 schema and then made changes to it right away; Kaufman is pretty sure that that is not an issue.

·  Fahrenholz-Mann and Nelson will provide some more tagged examples from ASM data.

·  Bartolo will initiate a bi-monthly teleconference for the MatML Coordination Committee and its Working Group members, as follows:

Bimonthly Teleconference Call: Wed. 1/12/2005 @ noon ET

The tentative meeting date for the first bi-monthly teleconference call is Wednesday, January 12, 2005 @ noon ET and is open to all who would like to participate. Please RSVP Gil () or Laura () by the end of November about whether the date and time work for you and what items you would like on the agenda. Confirmation about the exact date, time, conference call number, and agenda will be distributed by December 3, 2004.

Debbie Mies, Fran Cverna Recorders

Minutes respectfully submitted by Gil Kaufman

November 1, 2004

AGENDA

MatML COORDINATION COMMITTEE MEETING

OCTOBER 20, 2004; COLUMBUS, OH

HYATT HOTEL ADJOINING CONVENTION CENTER

Room Delaware D

Time: 5:30 PM*

Laura Bartolo, Chair

1. Welcome
2. Introductions of Attendees
3. Discussion of the role of ASM International in the MatML effort, Steve Weiss

4.  Report on Schema Development, Doug Fleming, WG Chair

5.  Report on OASIS spec development, Craig Seymour for Brett Johanson, WG Chair

6.  Report on the MatML Website, Craig Seymour

7.  Reports on trials/applications, as appropriate

8.  Discussion of the role and goals of the Coordination Committee

9.  Future meetings

* - This is a dinner meeting immediately following the MatML Session at MatSol with ASM International as the host.