W3C

– DRAFT –
WoT Profile

07 September 2022

Attendees

Present
Ben_Francis, Daniel_Peintner, Ege_Korkan, Kaz_Ashimura, Michael_Lagally, Michael_McCool, Tomoaki_Mizushima
Regrets
-
Chair
Lagally
Scribe
benfrancis, Ege, kaz

Meeting minutes

Review of 2022-08-31 Meeting Minutes

<kaz> Aug-31

Resolution: Meeting notes aproved.

Schedule

Lagally: Ideally decide profile 1.0 spec scope next week

Lagally: We should prepare for PlugFest testing

McCool: Testing calls are cancelled, so when should we organise testing?

Lagally: How about the profile call next week?

McCool: Yes let's discuss then. Times, repo etc.

Lagally: Testing call immediately after main call?

McCool: Haven't actually cancelled the main call next week. Four hours later than usual. Post-TPAC is Eastern time (earlier), but still overlapping testing call. Let's discuss in the next Profile call, which i don't think we have a conflict for

Lagally: There is a conflict

PlugFest the week after TPAC

McCool: Two week review end of September, CR & review end of October, looking at January for transition...

McCool: Have to hit the deadlines

Daniel: The decision was made to still go for CR?

McCool: We will try to, only do the normative parts we have consensus on, if not ready then defer it

Lagally: Let's see what we have at the end of September, will give us an idea of stability

Profile 1.0 Scope

Lagally: Shows a presentation with a proposal

Lagally: Make only common constraints and HTTP Baseline profile normative

<mlagally> https://github.com/w3c/wot-profile/blob/main/contributions/2022-08-10-Wot-Profile-Next-Steps.pptx

<mlagally> https://github.com/w3c/wot-profile/pull/272

Looking at changes in draft PR https://github.com/w3c/wot-profile/pull/272

Lagally: Some wordsmithing in the introduction which should hopefully not be contentious

McCool: Not sure about wording

Lagally: We can fix that

Lagally: I removed the information model chapter

Lagally: We had a discussion about scope of new profile work before

McCool: Could say profile for "other protocols" instead of digital twins

Ben: Yes that would be fine

Lagally: I don't mind, just thought it might trigger more interest

McCool: E.g. profiles for other protocols and a profile for resource constrained devices

Lagally: Took out JSON Schema section since it doesn't seem realistic for 1.0

Kaz: OK with adding that kind of note, but clarifying the purpose/motivation for profiles should be precisely discussed here

Kaz: The specification should maybe not be called profiles or directory implementation guidelines. If we want to publish a specification named profile we should discuss the motivation more clearly here.

Kaz: The current conclusion of protocol-based profiles and protocol extensions is fine, but should clarify the intention of profiles. Not for specific use cases.

Lagally: Please constrain the discussion to the review of this PR.

Lagally: We did extensive work on goals and requirements, would rather not re-open this discussion.

Lagally: Revisiting motiviation and goals should be done during TPAC for future profile work

Kaz: My concern is we sometimes talk about use case based profiles and we should not go in that direction

Ben: (+1 from me)

Kaz: Would prefer to focus on HTTP/CoAP, not talk about extension at all

Lagally: I'm happy to remove that paragraph with the extensions

McCool: Future statements not good, may not want to keep them. However, in general this is "profiles" not "profile", so profiles should be for narrower use cases.

Lagally: Terminology being removed

Lagally: Removed some commented out requirements from previous discussions. I think they can now be closed.

Lagally: Made one heading shorter

McCool: That's fine, good catch

Lagally: Placeholder for identifiers

Lagally: A guideline for units

Lagally: Date format recommendations

McCool: One more issue with relative values like brightness, people are confused about finite vs. percent based. Would be good to recommend using percentage for relative values.

Lagally: Please create a new issue for that

Ben: If you reference RFC3339 then you don't need the additional clarifying requirements

Lagally: Useful for people who don't read the reference

Lagally: The next change is making the two event sections non-normative

Lagally: Resolve editor's notes

Lagally: Entire section about JSON Schema removed

Lagally: That's the simplified Profile 1.0 specification

<Ege> bf: this is a step in good direction

Ben: however, this is not experience-driven

Ben: would like to see who is implementing WoT Profile
… note Consumers would be more difficult

Lagally: I have done one implementation of HTTP Baseline + Webhook

Lagally: In terms of what we have to validate, we have to verify all of the normative statements

Daniel: What you said about the consumer simply picking them from the plugfest, I don't think that's always the case. We have a Consumer which is TD compliant, but it's not fully baseline compliant because we can't fully handle async actions. There's a pending PR from Ben which at least makes the synchronous actions from Baseline Profile compatible,

but not the async actions. Consumer is not implemented.

Lagally: don't understand

Daniel: Existing consumers can invoke an action, but not necessarily query them. You need a special implementation because the profile extends the TD.

Lagally: Extends the TD

Daniel: Doesn't just extend, it breaks compatibility. Currently the response to the invokeaction request may not match the output data schema. Not that easy.

Lagally: I understand that the TD may currently have some limitations when describing brownfield devices

Ege: Complex interactions with hypermedia is an ongoing discussion since 1.0, still no generic proposal that works

I still haven't seen a Webhook consumer implementation. Is the consumer mlagally mentioned a generic consumer, or can it only consume one TD?

Lagally: Not generic. Actually, just logging what it says in the Webook. It just lists the notifications.

Lagally: I would like to come back to Ben's comment about implementation. The indication of who is implementing this is important and we have a good way to seeing that at the upcoming plugfest. Available implementations and TDs may only need to be updated with profile ID

Lagally: Could wait for two more weeks. If only have one implementation of async actions then may have to move it out.

McCool: Can mark it as at risk.

Lagally: We have one more potential implementation. The PlugFest will help understand if there are implementation issues with the specification.

Daniel: The profile deviates from the TD spec, which may break existing TD consumers.

Daniel: This isn't something that I like, but I do understand the concern/verbosity if done differently. Still trying to find a better solution.

McCool: My understanding of the TD spec is that it has input and output data schemas. DOn't see why node-wot would have a problem with that.

Daniel: The profile uses output data schema, but the response has a wrapper around that.

McCool: The profile has to be compliant with the TD spec, can't do something different, but can't specify additional constraints

Lagally: Getting back to the review of this PR

Lagally: Could we merge this as it is?

McCool: Agree with merging this if issues we discussed are cleaned up, can file issues e.g. for the actions issue

Lagally: This PR doesn't change that

McCool: Yes can have resolution to merge then make sure actions ready for other issues

<McCool> (need to drop soon... pre-TPAC call)

<McCool> (however, I still think we should merge this for now, carry on the point ben has raised next time)

Ben: I think that there is no evidence of any profile being more implementable than the others

Ben: we can also make the whole document informative

Kaz: we can merge this now and discuss later in the pre-TPAC meeting

Lagally: Can me make this a resolution?

Resolution: merge this PR and continue discussion in the pre-TPAC meeting

[adjourned]

Summary of resolutions

  1. Meeting notes aproved.
  2. merge this PR and continue discussion in the pre-TPAC meeting
Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 147 (Thu Jun 24 22:21:39 2021 UTC).