Minutes: OBIX Meeting

Time: Tuesday, 20 March, 2004, 1:00pm to 2:00pm Eastern Time
Description:
Conference Call
Chair’s Overview:
Toby Considine summarized where we are, barriers to getting more announcements of implementation. Consensus was that in this industry, until folks have part #s ready to ship, we will not get official statements. 4 potential announcements were discussed, but left out of minutes for possible to ensure continued frankness w/I meetings.
Jeremy Roberts pointed out that some members of LONMARK feel that oBIX does not yet have all the enterprise function their current proprietary web services support. Jeremy agreed to find out specifics and to bring them back as a wish-list for
Web Presence:
Resolved to request OASIS for WIKI and Member Section. Aaron Hansen and Brian Frank have agreed to assist. Key request: Big “Download Standard Here” at top of page.
Actually, upon consultation, we want a “Focus Area” – for example, There is a cost associated with Focus Areas, but they also do allow commercial sponsorship, by OASISI members and by non-members, IIANM. OASIS is also now able to offer a free Webinar on standards. PowerPoint and oBIX expert of our choice – marketed by OASIS. Hmmmm)
Brian Frank’s Overview of 2.0
V1.0 was bottom up because we needed the infrastructure to build on. oBIX supports strongly typed simple points, trends and alarms. Also supports low-level contracts to define interactions with same.
V2.0 will be top down, in effect a library of prototypical contracts of more complex scenarios for each vertical market. These are to include Energy Management, Physical Security, et al. and the focus is to unify disparate vertical markets. Brian cited ISA-88 and ISA-95 as standards (semantics?) he wanted to implement. (Note to self, become conversant with these standards.) As the Enterprise begins to access low level controls, oBIX will need to link to the Facility, the Location, and the Equipment, and the Meters, and the Doors.
Physical Security implies user databases, which will feed into and support standards for access to oBIX information.
Roadmap Discussion
Toby Considine pointed out from early implementation that we will want to establish standard ways to define standard views on oBIX data and functionality for different classes of users. Aaron Hansen suggested that this could fit nicely into the prototypical contracts as described.
Ken Wacks suggested that a big issue for early on adoption of any standards was the interoperability scenarios. How does oBIX interoperate with the proprietary systems described by Jeremy? Or as Paul Ehrlich suggested, how does oBIX interact with BACNET/XML?
Aaron Hansen re-iterated the discussions of using ICAL to submit oBIX schedules as being useful and easy to interact with from the enterprise. Aaron feels that the ICAL binding would not be too difficult.
There was general discussion of whether some low hanging fruit from Jeremy’s report along with an ICAL binding might provide enough new functions to enable a quick 1.1, one that might be easier to get endorsements from some of the members producing current proprietary systems.
Paul Ehrlich wondered if we can even go to 1.1 without 1.0 being an OASIS standard. Toby Considine opined that it was his impression that doing so was not unusual, as 1.0’s were often not quite ready for prime time.
OASIS staff (Dee & Jaimie) have confirmed that this is not an unusual standard life-cycle, and that we can proceed if we want to.
Discussions:
There was a brief discussion of three allied spaces that have been in conversation with oBIX. Under separate cover, Toby will send out a summary of these areas and the spaces they are in.
- NBIMS: National Building Information Model Standard. Unified data model for complete life-cycle of a building and data about the building. Includes Energy Modeling directly from Building Model and standardization of hand-off of information from Design/Construction to Operations (COBIE) including data standards for Commissioning. Paul Ehrlich described NBIMS as potentially the “Killer App for Enterprise Use of Web Services on Building Controls”.
- OGC: Open Geospatial Consortium builds standards for open access to spatial data, including live inclusion of geo-tagged sensor data from web services into GIS systems. OGC is building a strong presence in the first responder/homeland security world. It would be good for oBIX to be able to feed appropriate OGC formats. A good technical summary can be found at I recommend watching the video at
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- GridWise: GridWise means to remake the North American Power Grid into an intelligent integration between independent Power Generators, Transmission Services, Distribution services and Customer Faces. This is made much easier with intelligent buildings. This is another potential Killer App for oBIX.
Summary and Action Items
  1. Toby Considine: Request Member Section and WIKI from OASIS
  2. Jeremy Roberts: Compile list from LONMARK members of proprietary features missing in 1.0 specification to treat as Wish List for Specification.
  3. Toby Considine: Will share Steve Graham’s chart of layering of web service standards.
  4. Brian Frank: One page summary of View toward 2.0 for member section.
  5. Toby Considine: check on Life-Cycle issues
  6. Toby Considine: Contact NBIMS to set up joint meeting to discuss mutual interests.