OASIS OSLC Lifecycle Integration for Automation (OSLC Automation) Technical Committee

With high demand for faster development and deployment cycles of system and software products in order to reduce time to market, enterprises want to more flexibly manage and drive automation in their development environment to maximize the efficiency and maintainability of development processes. Also enterprises expect to incur significant integration work with respect to data, process and functional integration to fully achieve automation across the IT service life cycle. However, with the increase in rich distributed tools such as cloud-based build and deployment, automating the end to end product development operations is becoming even more complex than it already was from integrating different vendors, open source projects and their own homegrown components.

In order to support these automation scenarios, there is a need for an open technical architecture that is minimalist, loosely coupled, and standardized. This provides common standardized data formats and operations, which heterogeneous components can each use to describe and advertise their automated operations for use by all other tools in the ecosystem, in both user-triggered and programmatic situations. Consumers of this standardized communication can then leverage the value of many existing technologies that expose these operations, while only having to implement a single integration - with the standard.

The OSLC (Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration) initiative applies World Wide Web and Linked Data principles, such as those defined in the W3C Linked Data Platform (LDP), to create a cohesive set of specifications that can enable products, services and other distributed network resources to interoperate successfully. Therefore, the goal of OSLC Automation TC is to produce specifications that leverage the OSLC Core Specifications and enable interoperation of automation processes among IT systems and services hosted on platforms such as servers, workstations, and smart hand-held devices to improve efficiency and reduce the need for human interactions in the software development, test, deployment, and operations lifecycle phases. Scenarios and implementations drive these specifications to ensure that they are fit for purpose.

The OASIS OSLC Automation TC defines the linked data resource types related to the planning and execution of automation. The intent of this specification is to define the set of HTTP-based RESTful interfaces in terms of HTTP methods, HTTP response codes, MIME type handling, and resource formats. The capabilities of the interface definitions are driven by key integration scenarios and therefore don't represent a complete setup of operations on resources or resource types. The resource formats and operations may not match exactly the native models supported by automation service providers but are intended to be compatible with them, providing a common ground between heterogeneous components.

The OASIS OSLC Automation TC will accept as one input the OSLC Member Section (MS) Steering Committee approved versions of the OSLC Automation PostV2.0 specification from open-services.net which is available here.

Here are the key responsibilities of the OSLC Automation TC:

1. Expand on concepts from OASIS OSLC Core TC, LDP (Linked Data Platform), and other linked data and web technologies, as needed, to meet this list of integration capabilities
   1. Advertising, discovering, consuming and executing automated processes provided by a service
   2. Describing and providing parameters to those automated provider and consumer service processes
   3. Tracking the execution of those automated processes
   4. Accessing the results and side effects of those automated processes
   5. Managing the interaction and orchestration of multiple automated process, from one or many providers
2. Add additional technical elements as required to support current and future scenarios from OSLC User Groups, OSLC MS-affiliated TCs, Subcommittees and the OSLC Member Section Steering Committee
3. Support technical coordination activities:
   1. Escalate subsets of the specification(s) that may be useful to other OSLC MS affiliated-TCs
   2. Write and format the specification(s) in a way that is conducive to other OSLC domains and other specifications that wish to reuse automation linked data concepts
   3. Discuss with other OSLC MS-affiliated TCs scenarios that are common to their domain and automation, or that involve the interaction of both domains, and about common solutions where appropriate

The OASIS OSLC Automation TC is expected to produce within 24 months of the first meeting:

1. Scenarios: these will guide the priorities and specification contents within the TC
   1. Also a prioritized list of scenarios both developed by the OSLC Automation TC and contributed from OSLC User Groups, OSLC MS-affiliated TCs, Subcommittees and the OSLC MS Steering Committee.
2. Specifications: Based on the scenarios, specifications will be developed to address automation interoperability requirements, and set rules by which OSLC MS-affiliated domain TC specifications can leverage, and possibly extend the OSLC Automation TC specifications. The specifications will provide terminology and rules for defining resources in terms of the property names and value-types, and will recommend various resource representations.
   1. These deliverables may constitute a collection of specifications, one per capability or a single specification covering a collection of capabilities
   2. Additional specifications may be introduced over time to satisfy capabilities needed by supported scenarios
3. Supporting and enabling material, produced in collaboration with other OSLC MS-affiliated TCs as appropriate or on an as-needed basis to support broad adoption including:
   1. Guidance - informative, non-normative material covering topics such as interoperability implementation, resource design, and specification development
   2. Best Practices - publication of various best (and worst) practices to aid in the implementation of specifications and interoperable solutions.
4. Terminology: a set of terms intended to be useful across OSLC MS-affiliated TCs and other linked data specifications when describing automated processes and their interoperability control specifications.
5. Vocabulary: define, in support of specifications, sets of terms that can be understood by both machines and humans.
6. Test suites: provide description test suites (perhaps manual) to validate the compliance with the specification. The OASIS OSLC Automation TC may also identify suitable third party automated test suites, such as an open source suite of from Eclipse Lyo, which can be used to execute such tests.

The OASIS OSLC Automation TC plans to revise and expand its specifications over time, to enable functionality called for by revisions in, and expansions of, the motivational scenarios. This means that new specifications that cover new capabilities may be introduced as scenarios are refined to support new capabilities.

Maintenance

Once the TC has completed work on a specific deliverable (whether "complete" means it has become an OASIS Standard, or simply a Committee Specification is left to the TC's discretion), the TC will provide maintenance for that deliverable. The purpose of maintenance is to provide minor revisions to previously adopted deliverables to clarify ambiguities, inconsistencies and obvious errors. Maintenance is not intended to enhance a deliverable or to extend its functionality. In addition to maintenance, the TC may choose to create new versions of specifications that support additional capabilities as needed by scenarios.

This TC will operate under the "RF (Royalty Free) on Limited Terms" IPR mode as defined in the OASIS Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Policy.

The OSLC Automation TC will produce specifications that are applicable to two types of interest groups:

1. Developers of OSLC specifications, including those produced by OSLC MS-affiliated TCs and other standards groups
2. End users of Specifications, including implementers (software vendors, open source projects, and developers of custom business software)

The work should be of interest to anyone involved with integration of tools.

The OSLC Automation TC will conduct its business in English. The TC may elect to form subcommittees that produce localized documentation of the TC's work in additional languages.