The Methods & Tools Special Interest Group and the Interoperability Special Interest Group held a joint meeting from 5 pm till 6 pm Central European Time.
Participants
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (represented by Bill BARRETT) as Methods & Tools SIG leader, AmsterCHEM (represented by Jasper van BATEN), Bryan Research & Engineering (represented by Michael HLAVINKA), Malcolm WOODMAN, as Interoperability SIG leader, Michel PONS (contractor to CO-LaN as Chief Technology Officer).
Highlights
Members of both Special Interest Groups analyzed the constraints and requirements imposed to the upcoming distribution of the CAPE-OPEN Type Definitions as Type Libraries and Primary Interop Assemblies. This upcoming distribution will contain the types of the revised version of the Petroleum Fractions interface specification.
It was decided to keep the CAPE-OPEN 1.0 Type Library and the CAPE-OPEN 1.0 Primary Interop Assembly in exactly the same state as distributed so far. Since the CAPE-OPEN 1.0 Type Library is not distributed along with a companion file that acts as a version controller, a newer version of the CAPE-OPEN 1.0 Type Library may be overwritten by previous versions of it, for example at installation of an application developed with an earlier distribution of the CAPE-OPEN Type Definitions. The downside of this approach is that developers will see the types both of the deprecated version of the Petroleum Fractions interface specification and of the revised version of the same interface specification, differentiated just by a slightly different name of the interface.
The types of the revised Petroleum Fractions interface specification will be added to the CAPE-OPEN Type Library that contains additions to the original version 1.1 of the CAPE-OPEN standard. Flowsheet Monitoring and Custom Data are already extensions embedded in distributions of this CAPE-OPEN Type Library that is installed along with a companion file that controls its version.
The CAPE-OPEN 1.0 Type Library and the CAPE-OPEN 1.1 Type Library will therefore not change of version number. The CAPE-OPEN 1.1 extension Type Library will see its version number be incremented to 2.1.3. That will also be the version number of the new distribution packages of the CAPE-OPEN Type Definitions.
The types of the revised Petroleum Fractions interface specification will be added to CAPE-OPEN 1.2, the CAPE-OPEN version on which COBIA is based. As of now, it means that the next version of COBIA Runtime and COBIA Software Development Kit will be 1.2.1.0, except if, before this release, CO-LaN needs to distribute a maintenance version of COBIA that does not include the types of the revised Petroleum Fractions interface specification.
It is expected that UNIT SIG will be able to converge on March 8, 2023 to a consensus on the IDL embedding the revised Petroleum Fractions interface specification, leading, as exposed above, to the new versions (32-bit and 64-bit) of the distribution packages of the CAPE-OPEN Type Definitions.
Methods & Tools SIG and Interoperability SIG will hold their next joint meeting on March 7, 2023.