Going Through a Transformation

Team Action Week Baltimore was certainly a success, with more attendees and work accomplished than in quite a few years past.  While there I was treated to dinner at Charleston, an unforgettable restaurant, where a simple rock fish was transformed into a true delight for the palate.  Check it out at http://www.charlestonrestaurant.com/.

A couple of blogs ago I wrote about flames and sparks in Sydney that describes a friendly debate with a TM Forum member about the uses of the Information Framework (SID) model.  In the blog I mentioned that work was underway to develop a tool that supports transforming a technology-neutral information model to a technology-neutral implementation model.  The resultant model would support the generation of technology-specific interfaces.

At Team Action Week, work in progress on the tool was presented to a number of groups and was enthusiastically welcomed by them.  We also discussed further progress on the tool, which was used in support of the Resource Alarm Management (RAM) interface.  Plans are in place to fully document the different techniques that can be automatically applied with the tool.  For example, collapsing class hierarchies and transforming associations into reference attributes.

And work doesn’t stop on a one-way transformation.  Some discussions are starting in the Inventory Management interface group to investigate a two-way transformation.  Some view this as one of the “holy grails” of model management.

As move further into the model driven development world, one of the model formats in which the SID is available is most likely going to face extinction.  The SID XML schemas were useful as a starting point for those interested in developing interfaces by hand that were not yet available as TM Forum interfaces.  The schema will most likely be replaced with schema and simple interfaces developed by the model driven development tool that is being used to develop the TM Forum interfaces.

For those of you interested in all this take a look at the TM Forum Interface Program community as our work continues!

Off to Denver next week to do some open enrollment training, a treat for me to be in the United States for an entire month!  Then the treat ends with an entire series of trips to Asia.