Context Data & Intents Discussion group 2nd Dec 2021

[kriswest]

Group overview

At the FDC3 Use Cases Roundtable London, October 5th 2021 participants agreed that the FDC3 lexicon needs to be expanded, both with additional intents and context types to support Use Cases, but also to include more primitive data types in order to construct complex types. A number of participants also agreed that now is an appropriate time to expand the Lexicon.

See #455 for full details of the meeting outcomes.

This group is being convened to discuss and arrange work to contribute further Context types and Intents to support Use Cases being implemented by participants.

Relevant issue tags

Current open issues that relate to the discussion group:

Issues will also be tagged with the labels:

Meeting Date

Thursday 2nd Dec 2021 - 9am EST / 2pm GMT

WebEx info

• Meeting Link
  Meeting number: 2555 338 3631
  Password: mDmKM4kiE55

More ways to join

• Join by video system:
  • Dial 25553383631@finos.webex.com
  • You can also dial 173.243.2.68 and enter your meeting number
• Join by phone
  • +1-415-655-0003 US Toll
  • +44-20319-88141 UK Toll
• Access code: 255 533 83631

Meeting notices

• FINOS Project leads are responsible for observing the FINOS guidelines for running project meetings. Project maintainers can find additional resources in the FINOS Maintainers Cheatsheet.

• All participants in FINOS project meetings are subject to the LF Antitrust Policy, the FINOS Community Code of Conduct and all other FINOS policies.

• FINOS meetings involve participation by industry competitors, and it is the intention of FINOS and the Linux Foundation to conduct all of its activities in accordance with applicable antitrust and competition laws. It is therefore extremely important that attendees adhere to meeting agendas, and be aware of, and not participate in, any activities that are prohibited under applicable US state, federal or foreign antitrust and competition laws. Please contact legal@finos.org with any questions.

• FINOS project meetings may be recorded for use solely by the FINOS team for administration purposes. In very limited instances, and with explicit approval, recordings may be made more widely available.

• A Discussion Group has no direct decision-making power regarding the FDC3 standard - rather it is intended that anything they propose or work on will result in proposals (via Github issues and PRs) for the Standards Working Group participants to consider and vote on for inclusion in the standard. As such, participation in a Discussion group is not required for contributing to any particular issue or FDC 2.0 as a whole.

Agenda

• Convene & roll call, review meeting notices (5mins)
• Group goals and deliverables (5mins)
• Introductions from participants (10mins)
• Review existing example proposals (and proposal template) (15mins)
  • ViewHoldings Intent #497 (@dominicgifford)
  • Define more context types used to visualize (or otherwise represent) financial data #442 (@kriswest)
• Solicit indications of interest in raising or reviewing further proposals (5 mins)
• Define other issues to discuss with Context and Intent specifications (10mins)
  • Lists vs single values
  • Defining primitive types/data formats for use in types
  • Is there any prior art we should follow on or use for types like "Trade"
  • Should we prefer strong/explicit identifiers for some use cases, or the more loose approach currently used
  • ...
• Future meetings (5 mins)
• Arrange next meeting date/agenda & Adjourn (5mins)

Minutes

• Will Shatton (RBC) introduced the goals of the discussion group
• During introductions participants shared what they'd like to see resulting from the discussion group
  • @hampshan (UBS) would like to see opening up and standardisation of more intents and context types, making FDC3 easier to use, and is hoping to contribute to this
  • @donbasuno (FactSet) would like to make it easier to connect applications and data without doing lots of extra work, and believes more intents and context types will help with consistency across applications and platforms.
  • @bertrand-s (Symphony) would like to speed up FDC3 adoption, and expand the intents and types used for chat workflows
  • @dominicgifford (IHS Markit) would like to ease integrations for customers with their products through FDC3
  • @dpraul (FinTech Studios) is interested in expanding intents support for workflows related to news
  • @kriswest (Cosaic) would like to expand available intents and types available for adopters of FDC3 to use
  • Michael Coates (OpenFin) shared their desire to protect and grow the standard in a sensible way
  • Nathan Emery (FlexTrade) is keen on integrating with various parties, making integrations smooth is a massive win for customers
  • @rich-fts (FinTech Studios) would like to facilitate seamless participation with others
  • Sarah Stone (Cosaic) would like to help move the standard forward
  • Yacine Zalouani (UBS) sees great potential aligning across all areas of the business with the FDC3 lexicon, including asset management, investment banking etc.
• ViewHoldings Intent #497
  • ViewHoldings received a lot of support as a necessary addition to the intents ecosystem
  • Nathan Emery (FlexTrade) mentioned the usefulness for switching between e.g. company news and related holdings
  • The potential need for a Sector type was raised for ViewHoldings. Everyone agreed that this could be considered separately from the proposed intent.
  • The user context for the holdings was raised as a potential issue, but it was pointed out that the target application could easily provide this context, or it could be included in the context sent with the intent, and that plenty of other intents are useful without this extra information.
  • @hampshan raised that in terms of instrument identifiers there are both unique and non-unique identifiers, and a clear path is needed to deal with this. This was identified as a future discussion topic.
  • Michael Coates (OpenFin) strongly advised that a reference implementation, usage examples and existing workflows by real applications are needed first before anything is added to the standard. There was a long discussion about intents not really needing reference implementation, as they are merely string identifiers, and they need to be pre-agreed before they can be used.
  • It was agreed that the FDC3 maintainers can assist @dominicgifford in raising a PR for the issue, including usage examples, which could then be discussed at the next meeting.
  • A meeting participant asked if we could or should use an 'experimental' flag to highlight intents and contexts that have recently been introduced and may be (more likely to be) subject to change or replacement in future release.
  • @kriswest responded that the FDC3 maintainers are currently exploring the formalisation of a deprecation policy and experimental flag (within FDC3's governance documentation and website) to be used for exactly this purpose and that an issue will be raised soon with a proposal.
• Define more context types used to visualize (or otherwise represent) financial data #442
  • The chart use case was identified as a useful one by several participants.
  • There is a spectrum of data that is needed for chart workflows, from only instrument(s), to much richer and more exhaustive chart data. The chart type can continue to be expanded with optional fields over time to support this.
  • The subtypes in the issue and PR should be discussed in more detail in a future meeting.
• The next meeting was agreed to be held on Thursday, 13 January at the same time.

Action Items

• @Julia-Ritter to raise next meeting for Thursday 13 January
• @dominicgifford / @finos/fdc3-maintainers to raise PR for ViewHoldings Intent #497
• @rikoe to add ViewHoldings Intent #497 and Define more context types used to visualize (or otherwise represent) financial data #442 for more detailed discussion during next meeting
• Participants should comment on meeting issue with additional proposals for discussion during future meetings

[rikoe]

Riko Eksteen / Adaptive

[dominicgifford]

Dom Gifford - IHS Markit

[hampshan]

Andrew Hampshire @ UBS

[bertrand-s]

Bertrand Laporte / Symphony

[Julia-Ritter]

Julia / FINOS

[donbasuno]

Johan Sandersson / FactSet 🎁

[rich-fts]

Rich Taylor / FinTech Studios

[agitana]

Aitana Myohl / FINOS

[kriswest]

Kris West / Cosaic

[sarahaislinnstone]

Sarah Stone / Cosaic

[dpraul]

Dylan Praul / FinTech Studios

[hughtroeger]

Hugh Troeger / FactSet

[Julia-Ritter]

Untracked attendees:

• William Shotton / RBC
• Nathan Emery / Flex Trade
• Chris Albrecht / OpenFin
• Micheal Coates / OpenFin
• Sarah Stone / Cosiac
• Yacine Zalouani / UBS