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3. Technical Committees

Five Technical Committees met on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The Min-IOP Technical Committee is working to develop a comprehensive table of which features of iCAL are actually implemented in which Calendaring products and are able to interoperate successfully. The goal is to determine the minimum interoperable subset of functions defined by the three RFCs which are actually in use and which must be succesfully carried forward into any revision or “simplification” of RFC 2445, iCalendar. The Technical Committee is actively involved in developing this matrix and determining how well the matrix maps to what the needed minimum actually is.

The CALDAV Technical Committee will produce scenarios for additional CalDAV testing for the next CalConnect Interoperability Event, then turn to assisting CalDAV authors in submitting the CalDAV draft to the IETF. They expect to use the use cases from the USECASE TC and anticipate contributing additional use cases. CALDAV is very interested in being able to conduct virtual Interops on a monthly basis and will work with IOP/TEST and the IOP Manager to accomplish this under Consortium auspices. The Oracle and Isamet CalDAV servers are available on the internet for client testing.

The CALDAV participants were heavily involved in the CalConnect Interoperability Event and also provided several demonstrations to the Roundtable:

  • Mozilla’s Sunbird and Oracle Calendar with CalDAV protocol adapter

  • Mozilla’s Sunbird and Oracle’s Exchange CalDAV protocol adapter

  • Isamet Mulberry Desktop Client and Isamet CalDAV server

  • Isamet Mulberry Mobile Client and Isamet CalDAV server

The IOP/TEST Technical Committee is working to develop and formalize the Consortium’s CalConnect Interoperability Event testing. Among the issues being addressed by the Technical Committee are planning and implementing virtual and ad hoc interops; how to contact nonmembers about CalConnect Interoperability Event testing; how to establish CalConnect Interoperability Event planning early on and integrate product planning; and how to conduct multiple CalConnect Interoperability Event tests together. The Committee is also beginning discussions on a reference implementations which for ad hoc testing by implementers as a service from the Consortium to promote calendaring and scheduling standards.

The RECURR Technical Committee was only able to meet briefly as the Chair was not able to come to the Roundtable and had to join the TC by teleconference. The problem statement for the TC was reviewed and narrowed to focus on recurrence rule problems. An additional effort will be to identify and document the specifics of existing problems with recurrence rules as part of the MIN-IOP effort.

The USECASE Technical Committee spent substantial time compiling a set of Use Cases identifying “real world” requirements for interoperable calendaring and scheduling implementations. Some 29 specific use cases were documented. The next steps will be to develop a ranking method and continue to add use cases from other members, and from other Technical Committees.