Standard WG Meeting - Nov 18th, 2021

[kriswest]

Date

Thursday 18 Nov 2021 - 10am EST / 3pm GMT

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Agenda

• Convene & roll call, review meeting notices (5 mins)
• Review action items from previous meeting and other recent activity (5 mins)
  • Standard WG Meeting - Oct 28th, 2021 #481
  • FDC3 training course now available: Enroll here
  • PRs open for review:
    • FDC3 Explained - demo app for beginners? #165
      • Adding a toolbox directory and the FDC3 Explained app #367 (Open todo items)
    • Remove concept of 'global' channel, context broadcast should always be opt-in #308
      • 308 Remove details of the 'global' channel that was deprecated in FDC3 1.2 #496
    • Introduce a general, host independent, fdc3.general.app.manifest manifest type describing an application #314
      • Update the Application schema #437 (Relevant to today's agenda)
    • Rename 'System Channels' 'User Channels' #430
      • 430 Rename System channels User channels to reflect usage #479
    • Make it possible to return data from a raised intent #432
      • 432 Added the ability to return data from a raised intent #495
    • Define more context types used to visualize (or otherwise represent) financial data #442
      • [DO NOT MERGE - to be superceded] 442 Define more context types used to visualize (or otherwise represent) financial data #443 (Relevant to Context Data & Intents Discussion group 2nd Dec 2021 #490)
    • Improve spec and documentation of fdc3.addContentListener to mention joining channels #451
      • 451 Improve spec and documentation of fdc3.addContentListener to mention joining channels #492
    • Make it possible to resolve intent based on output type as well as input #498
      • 498 Allow intents to be resolved on output type (where they return data) #499
    • InstrumentList is missing from ContextTypes #500
      • 500 Add InstrumentList to ContextTypes enum #503
  • New issues for discussion:
    • Deprecate use of the string name field in favour of AppMetadata #506
    • Formal specification issues
• Opportunity to comment on Proposal for the FDC3 project to adopt the new FINOS Standards Governance model (including the Community Specification License) #412 (5 mins)
  • PR: Governance and licensing updates #485
• Support the production of Desktop Agent Bridging #453 (20 mins)
• Remove App Directory specification, restrict manifest concerns to FDC3 capabilities #468 (20 mins)
• AOB & Adjourn (5 mins)

Minutes

• Proposal for the FDC3 project to adopt the new FINOS Standards Governance model (including the Community Specification License) #412
  • No objections to the proposed governance updates were raised
  • Governance update comments on Governance and licensing updates #485 will be discussed with the JDF/FINOS
  • All were encouraged to review the PR, which will be merged after comments submitted have been dealt with
• Support the production of Desktop Agent Bridging #453
  • Natwest Markets presented their use-case and work on Desktop Agent Bridging
    • Use-case:
      • Their users have multiple application types:
        • Freestanding Legacy C# apps
        • Freestanding Javascript apps running in a browser
        • Web apps hosted in containers (Finsemble & OpenFin)
        • Symphony apps
      • Their users also have multiple PCs running these applications
      • They desire interop between all these app types, including across machines
  • Approach they've taken
    • DesktopAgent Backplane infrastructure
      • Implements the Desktop Agent for freestanding C# applications and Javascript apps in a web browser
      • Uses a Bridge service to connect into each desktop agent (e.g. in a web container) - the bridge service is specific to each Desktop Agent implementation
      • Works across multiple machines that the user is logged into
    • Bridge services cannot be fully implemented using the current Desktop Agent API
      • Hence, each bridge service has to be implemented for a specific desktop agent using non-standard access to channels & intents
      • The bridge serives would benefit from standardisation allowing a general-purpose implementation
      • Other issues to look at:
        • How to provide a single/container agnostic IntentResolver UX across the agents
        • How to provide Security (it may not be desirable to repeat all messages to all other desktop agents)
        • Desktop agent discovery on other hosts
    • Natwest Markets is looking into contributing their approach/implementation to FINOS
  • Citi also confirmed that they have the same use-case
    • They have used a slightly different approach based on desktop agents connecting to each other directly to make calls
    • Trying to avoid dependency on a single centralised message bus (for resilience)
  • A meeting participant suggested that we should make compliance with any such extension to the standard optional
  • Consensus was achieved that:
    • This is an interesting topic within FDC3's charter
    • A discussion group should be formed to work on proposals for extension of the FDC3 standard to support
• Remove App Directory specification, restrict manifest concerns to FDC3 capabilities #468
  • An introduction to this issue was given
  • It was observed that:
    • connection to an AppD is currently required for compliance with the FDC3 specification
    • (according to the memory of one involved) it was not originally intended to be required in order to be compliant with the API specification (the 4 FDC3 specifications were separate)
    • Multiple firms have recently acknowledged the value that the existing AppD specification has had for them (e.g. Citi @ the NY members meeting, see FDC3 Use Cases Roundtable at FINOS member meetings in London (October 4th) and New York (November 9th) #455)
    • (according to multiple meeting participants) the AppD includes the definition of both Application records and a REST API for a directory of them and that these can (and have been) used separately
      • The Application record has a similar purpose and format to the W3C's web application manifest (draft specification MDN)
        • ...which is extensible
        • but also does not provide fields needed to represent non-web applications (which are used with FDC3's appD)
    • The issue, as written, highlights some perceived issues with the AppD specification and proposes to deprecate and remove the entire AppD specification
      • With the exception of the intent metadata (which is shown embedded into multiple different schema formats)
        • A meeting participant observed that:
          • there isn't much point standardizing this if its embedded in a non-standard record.
          • the proposal could have sought to address the issues rather than removing the entire specification
          • Improving the AppD specification was a specific roadmap commitment for FDC3 2.0
    • Deprecation/removal of AppD is not necessary to allow Desktop Agent implementations to use a different mechanism for resolving intents and fdc3.open calls, it could instead be made optional by applying the MAY or SHOULD keywords in the spec, rather than MUST.
  • The end of the meeting curtailed discussion and it was resolved to pick up the discussion again at the next meeting

Decisions Made

• Consensus that Support the production of Desktop Agent Bridging #453 is interesting and worth pursuing
  • Consensus that a discussion group should be formed to work on this, which the FDC3 maintainers will arrange
• Next meeting to be brought forward to 16th December to avoid Xmas

Action Items

• @kriswest Convene a discussion group to explore desktop agent bridging
  • First meeting: Desktop Agent Bridging Discussion group #523
  • Next meeting: Wednesday 12th Jan 2pm GMT / 9am EST
• @kriswest Next meeting agenda to include:
  • Remove App Directory specification, restrict manifest concerns to FDC3 capabilities #468
• @Julia-Ritter Move next meeting appointment to Thursday 16th Dec
• Rolled over from previous meetings
  • Implement PR for Create an **implementations** section in the FDC3 website #466 @lspiro-Tick42 @kriswest

Untracked attendees

Full name	Affiliation	GitHub username

[copiesofcopies]

Aaron Williamson // FINOS

[agitana]

Aitana Myohl / FINOS

[RandallDang-Citi]

Randall Dang @Citi

[openfin-gavin]

Gavin Lauchlan / OpenFin

[lspiro-Tick42]

Leslie / Tick42

[pbaize]

Pierre Baize / OpenFin

[kriswest]

Kris West / Cosaic

[mattjamieson]

🚀

[opoupeney]

Olivier Poupeney / Symphony

[Julia-Ritter]

Julia / FINOS

[hampshan]

Andrew Hampshire @ UBS

[jgavronsky]

Jane @ FINOS

[hughtroeger]

Hugh / FactSet

[sarahaislinnstone]

Sarah Stone / Cosaic

[rikoe]

Riko Eksteen / Adaptive

[donbasuno]

Johan - FactSet

[Julia-Ritter]

Untracked attendees:

• Saurabh Gupta / Natwest Markets
• Yacine Zalouani/ UBS
• Manish Bhutani / NWM

[kriswest]

Minutes for the (interesting IMHO) SWG meeting today have been posted in this issue:
As usual please let me know about any inaccuracies or omissions.

[openfin-gavin]

@kriswest I did note that OpenFin has a concern over the community spec license based on previous proposed language that we don't currently see in the suggested text. We'll comment in the issue to track.