eCots Platform: An Inter-industrial Initiative for COTS-Related Information Sharing

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http://www.ecots.org

eCots Platform:An Inter-industrial Initiative

for COTS-Related Information Sharing

Jean-Christophe MielnikThales Research & Technology

[email protected]

Jean-Georges SchlosserEDF

[email protected]

Vincent BouthorsBull/Jalios

vincent.bouthors @jalios.com

Bernard LangINRIA

[email protected]

Stéphane LaurièreINRIA

[email protected]

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Contents

• The genesis of the eCots project• eCots platform overview

– Core data and services– Economic model– Legal issues– Technical infrastructure

• Current status– Demonstration– How to participate

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The genesis of the eCots project

• The growing use of COTS instead of in-house developments implies– A loss of control of the COTS based systems– An increased dependency on COTS producersà COTS users need reliable, accurate and continuously updated knowledge of the

software component market.

• In practice– Factual data are often missing– Legal, commercial and technical information about COTS are opaque– Marketing strategies often lead to announcements describing an idealized

strategy

• Need forFactual data on actors – producers, distributors and consulting companies – and products, processed on the technical, commercial, economical, financial and legal dimensions

Information on COTS : a strategic involvement

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• Describe only Web Services• No collaboration

• Cover small parts of COTS scope• Low level of detail• No collaboration• Expensive

• Unstructured data

• Very succinct descriptions• Only open-source software

Drawbacks

• Abundant and accurate information• Much collaboration

TheServerSide.com,ITToolbox.com

Community portals

• Structured dataIBM, Microsoft, SAPUDDI registries

UDDI catalogs

• Structured dataCxp.fr,Softdatabase.com,ProgicielExpert.com

Proprietarycatalogs

• Structured data• Recommendations• Active collaboration• Driven by users

Freshmeat.net, LinuxSoftware Map sites

Open-source communitycatalogs

AssetsExamplesCatalog types

à Lack of details or accuracy and interoperability + no standards

Existing catalogs emphasize the need of a common description model

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• Many companies lead COTS assessment campaigns on a regular basis– Technical and purchasing experts elaborate detailed description of COTS– Collected data and complementary experiments result in company’srecommendations– This data is used in commercial negotiations and technical proposals

• Drawbacks of this process– Assesment campaigns are not frequent enough when organized by a single actor – Producers benefiting from a monopoly are reluctant to comply with the framework that

any single industrial group can propose– Collected data becomes obsolescent after few months, to maintain it is highly expensive

• INRIA proposed to THALES to share all or part of its information on COTS freely outside the group, in order to

– Invite the growing community of COTS users to participate more directly with a view to contribute to the definition, qualification and maintenance of this information

– Motivate COTS vendors to participate as well– Taking benefit of the open content dynamics– INRIA and Thales joined by EDF and Bull, supported by RNTL (Ministry of industry)

The importance of intra-company pooling for COTS industrial management

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• Open communication model– Developinga high-quality informational portal on COTSin a collaborative way

(« Open Source Intelligence ») – Experienced in a variety of open cooperative structures (von Hippel's « content

networks»)– Low transaction costs and online collaborative editing encourage interaction

• Trust networks– Sustainingthe fine balance between openness and a healthy signal/noise ratio

[Stalder, Hirsh ]– Usingtrust -based evaluation function(s), shown to resist both individual and

concerted deception– Grantingactive and reliable contributors with points that build up their reputation

and allow them to assume more responsabilities– Meta-moderation: moderators who have accumulated points can moderate

moderations

Openness and the dynamics of free/open-source access

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eCots platform: core data

DetailedDescription Forms of actors and products

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eCots platform core data: filled DetailedDescription Form example

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eCots platform: core data and services

• Core data– COTS and Organizations Detailed Description Forms

• Main services– Workgroups (Detailed Description Forms factory)– Knowledge base– Replication– Experience feedback

– Rating and trust-based functions

• Other services– COTS identification (MD5-based)– Import and printing– Alerts

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eCots platform: DetailedDescription Form factory example

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EJB Application Servers descriptionUML model

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Next events: workinggroup meetings

+ public conferences

FAQ

Glossary of terms related to the current COTS family

Forums

Recentpublications

The same framework is used for theKnowledge Base area,highlighting recentinformation on allCOTS families

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eCots platform: replication service

• Principle– allowing eCots members to have access both to their own confidential items

of information – in local mode – and to the data managed by the portal

• Means– Optimistic protocol to manage conflicts in a programmable manner ensuring

consistency– One single interaction for synchronizing two replicates– Private portals can be disconnected from external environment

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Public server access

Metadata replication

Datareplication

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Public data V1

Thales

Public data V1

EDF

Replication

Public data V2

Thales

Public data V2

EDF

Replication


Privatedata

Completes DDF* with confidential

information

Thales COTS user

Update public DDF* and data

ecots.org

Createpublic DDF* and input data

COTS datavisualization

COTS datavisualization

Updatespublic data

Public data V3

Public data V3

Replication

* DDF = Detailed Description Form

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eCots platform: economicmodel

• Rationale– Free access to core data and knowledge base– Reducing costs by automating most of the portal and keeping human

intervention to a minimum– Incomes required for administration, deployment and further evolution

• Structure– Non-profit organization, close to standardization consortiums like W3C,

OASIS

• Main incomes– Membership annual fees

– Remunerative services (replication service subscription, replicated platform customization, other specific services)

– Public funds

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eCots platform: legal issues

• Legal experts participated to the project right from the beginning

• Following their recommendations– contributors own the information they publish– readers and contributors accept the proposed license, according to their activity

• The proposed set of licenses is inspired by the open-source– it is aimed at fostering the reuse of the content created on the portal– license 1 (individual contributions): free distribution, copy and modification– license 2 (contributions of companies): free distribution and copy– license 3 (editorial contents): limited distribution and copy– The underlying Jalios Content Management System contributes to the reuse of

content, thanks to data and metadata import/export in XML format

Publication licenses and content reuse

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eCots platform: technical infrastructure

• End users– collaborate through forums, FAQ and glossaries– share recommendations and comments associated with each publication, each

field, or each object

• Webmasters in charge of portal or sub-portals– define the structure of data– design the templates to display data and aggregate information– assign roles and rights to the various members and groups– design the workflow to ensure the validation process

• Software engineers– develop other service on the JCMS core (J2EE standard) – may program specific resolution conflicts to ensure consistency after

synchronization

Jalios Content Management System (JCMS) empowers all users

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Current status: demonstration

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Current status: how to participate

• During the preview stage– Register to one of the 3 proposed mailing lists

• to be notified of official opening• to contribute to the initial Detailed Description Forms definition and content

feeding• to beta-test the platform services

• On official opening– Sharing structured and non-structured information on COTS products and

organizations– Participating to the specification of Detailed Description Forms for specific

COTS family– Contributing to the future of eCots by subscribing to the eCots organization

– Subscribing to the replication service

Join the eCots initiative

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Current status: how to participate

• Extension of the eCots platform within the 6th European Framework Program– if you are interested in further development of the eCots platform

and its integration within the continuation of the ECUA European project (European COTS Users Working Group), please contact [email protected]

• Information on eCots– http://www.ecots.org

• Information on the Jalios Content Management System– http://www.jalios.com

eCots Platform: An Inter-industrial Initiative for COTS-Related Information Sharing

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