ITS Standards

[nprobert]

Just a thought, but why conjure up yet another clunky Windows application?

The IT folks in many companies, including ours, won't allow alien 3rd party apps on their desktops. So we have to resort to laptops that aren't connected and sneaker net.

Create a web application for managing the ASN.1 and XML data for ITS applications. Dump the data into a MySQL database, write code in PHP and/or AJAX. Use WSDL/SOAP just to show we are walking the talk.

The end result is that people would be able to get the most up to date information, and perhaps be able to manage it collaboratively.

I might be willing to do a bit of this (if the boss approves), but we have the Linux+Apache server (which we are plannig to co-locate at the VII consortium offices) to do it on.

[jjelliso]

An online repository of the standards is desperately needed. Hopefully it could contain some versioning ability too. My research lab at the University of Maryland would also be happy to host this type of tool if need be. The problem seems to be that the SDOs want to lock people into paper copies and secured pdf files. The current system is broke and in my opinion is hindering the use and adoption of the standards. I have brought this up at the TRB and ADUS meetings and people tend to agree that there is a problem but without some sort of federal involvement I doubt there will be a resolution.

[nprobert]

The Mini-Edit .ITS files are Microsoft access database format (ugh!). Those could be converted to other databases, like MySQL which lends itself nicely to web applications.

A KDE application called Knoda and with the libhk-classes-mdb package, I can open these under Linux. After creating a database in MySQL, I am able to copy and paste the tables from one to the other.

[Site Admin]

We built this forum to in fact host it, and could create it (integrated with the forum and with Mini-Edit) in a man month or so. We have not formerly proposed doing that to FHWA but, I may do so in the next few weeks with IEEE sponsorship (the IEEE is the funding champion for developing the Mini-support)

[My own vision of that is that Mini-Edit as a stand-alone tool should recede into a web base solution with 100% open interfaces so others can build on the interfaces. I still need to edit records for things as a data stewards, but mostly... I want to be able to ping a WSDL call to a site and get back the relevant page of a standard and all its dependencies. I don't want to work out baseline changes by hand anymore and I expect ITS to have the same level of integrated documentation that other things have. On a related note; I am developing a revision based schema repository that should be working soon. I have not managed to progress much on developing a repository of testing messages for open use.]

The technology to do all of this is easy and common. Right now the hold-up is two fold. One: The decision that we really do need an easy to use data registry for deployment support from the FHWA and the SDOs. Two: the IPR issues of the material itself.which is owned by the SDOs, and not by SCSC, or FHWA, or you. Some, but not all, SDOs have agreed to let this site put it up for free distribution. We need to proceed, but we need to do in a way that these parties are served as well as the needs of deployment to get the materials and be able to use it and track it.

There is also a lingering bad taste from the million$ plus FHWA spent on a "registry" the last time around that causes people to confuse the need and the current cost benefit ratio (running this site and hosting all the ITSware dedicated server resources costs about 30k a year).

I am grateful for your expression of this need here, it help FHWA and the SDOs see clearly that such a resource is in fact needed. Once that can be more widely agreed upon, then we can debate how to solve it As a bit of a self prompting plug. This site, with its mostly volunteer community creating content and helping each other, is by far the most useful support tool in the entire realm of ITS for technical information nabout the standards. I have been very frank with FHWA and with SDO people that it was my own goal to create a cross-integrated site site of such critical mass they could not do without it, and then to get some FHWA support to widen it and put each of the SDOs on some kind of control board to run it long term. Again, I am very grateful to al the people who seem share this goal as procurer to wide ITS deployment success.

[jjelliso]

[Site Admin]

I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, but I believe the muddy answer is to your question is...

If you buy the standard and the schema that comes with it, you can do with the schema as you wish. In other words, your copy gives you the right to give it everyone on earth because that how an XML schema is used, it is exchanged between trading partners. There no usage meter and you can add content to it or remove it (derivative works) as you see fit. However, if you do so you may NOT represent the schema as coming from the SDO or as being validated or authoritative by them in some way. This right to copy is not true for the printed stds or other published works (sold) by the SDO. All deployments should buy a copy of any standard they will in fact use to ensure that they have these rights.

It is because of this "read" that I feel we can put up a schema repository that will serve valid schema sets from the SDOs (or from any deployment for that matter) to others with some liability shield. If required, I will purchase one legal schema from each SDO as needed. Note the word "sets" here. We still have some major deployment issues in making the XML schema files link to each other IMO and this side-steps that issue.

The problem gets a lot more complex when you come to understand that anyone can take a DB (by this I mean the Mini-Edit ones) from which the printed standard and the authoritative schemas were created, and run it into a powerful tool such as Mini-Edit where you can easily re-render the schema to also include 99% of the additional information found in the printed standard as app-info tag notes in the schemas and therefore "reverse engineer: the printed standard in some sense. What is right and far and proper in this sense is an unanswered question. While no one wants the SDOs ripped off, there are many valid use cases where a deployment wants to mix-n-match between standards and a schemas to archive much of the same result. A simple push-button sub-schema creation tool (a much requested improvement for Mini-Edit) quickly runs into this issue head-on. Again, this is a no-mans land of rights and rules.

[DC Kelley]

I am putting together yet another "super" database of all the data concepts that I need to check over the SAE ATIS work before I can call it complete.

Tell you what I will do, I will put it up on a simple ASP form and connect it by way of either ADO or MySQL so that others can get at it to play. Sort of a poor mans registry, but read-only at this point because I am to lazy to write records insert routines and I do not yet want to connect it to the Mini-Edit tool for real. The .NET 2005 framework make this pretty simple to construct. I wonder if I can integrate it with the session stuff of these PHP pages.

[DC Kelley]

A bit of an update on this project. I have spend way too much time in a San Diego hospital during the holiday season to get much done. My otherwise healthy 94 years old Gma has needed some help and this has restricted the time I normally spend during the holiday on a selected programming project. I still want it done, but right now spare time is scarce. It has also become painfully obvious that the FHWA does not particularly care to support this task, presumably they still do not see the need. If anyone wants the last master DB I made, please PM me for a copy.