Y2023-02: COBIA and marshalling

17 JANUARY 2023

The Methods & Tools Special Interest Group met from 4 pm till 5:30 pm Central European Time.

Agenda:

  • CWAF-07 demonstration
    1. COM interop for on-the-fly generated interfaces
    2. Use Case for remote CAPE-OPEN Test Suite
    3. Develop a scope for testing COM/COBIA proxy generation.
  • COBIA roadmap
  • Versioning: Malcolm WOODMAN’s comments, status of document/figures.
  • Threading
  • Manager Common Interface Specification: timeline for review.

Participants
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (represented by Bill BARRETT), AmsterCHEM (represented by Jasper van BATEN), Bryan Research & Engineering (represented by Michael HLAVINKA), Michel PONS (contractor to CO-LaN as Chief Technology Officer).

Highlights

Out of the agenda above, Methods & Tools SIG addressed only various aspects of COBIA roadmap and of CAPE-OPEN versioning.

First Michel PONS informed Methods & Tools SIG that a request has been made to CO-LaN Management Board for a work authorization on maintenance of COBIA 1.2. The request is on the agenda for the Management Board meeting to be held on January 18. The maintenance would be carried out by AmsterCHEM.

In the context of COBIA maintenance, Methods & Tools SIG discussed ticket #170, its purpose and ways to resolve it. Ticket #170 aims at exposing COBIA version in client header files.

Within the discussion on ticket 170, Methods & Tools SIG expanded on COBIA versioning in the document defining the CAPE-OPEN version scheme. The document is developed by Methods & Tools SIG together with the Interoperability SIG.

CO-LaN has chosen to give COBIA a version number that carries the major and minor numbers of the highest CAPE-OPEN version supported by COBIA middleware. Also the COBIA Software Development Kit (SDK) is distributed under a version number that matches exactly the version number of the COBIA Runtime merged into the distribution of COBIA SDK. These arrangements, specific to the COBIA distribution, were inserted in the section of the above mentioned document that deals with CAPE-OPEN Distribution Packages.

Methods & Tools SIG drafted a survey targeted mostly at software vendors, to support the decision process on which language bindings need to be developed in Work Package 2 of Phase III of COBIA development project.

CO-LaN Management Board has asked for commitments of use by software vendors of any COBIA language bindings funded by CO-LaN. Nowadays COBIA is readily useable for developing COBIA-based applications written in C++, using the COBIA Software Development Kit. This development strategy, targeted at C++, fitted well with the first developments of COBIA-based CAPE-OPEN Process Modelling Components. It would be possible for CO-LaN to provide COBIA language bindings for C, FORTRAN, Java, Python, etc…

Next meeting of Methods & Tools SIG is scheduled for January 24, 2023.

Contact

Picture of Bill BARRETT (US EPA representative) in December 2018Contact Bill BARRETT (representative of US Environmental Protection Agency, leader of the Methods & Tools Special Interest Group) should you wish to join the Methods & Tools Special Interest Group. Its charter is: “Improve integration, and expand utilization of Computer-Aided Process Engineering (CAPE) applications within the enterprise through identification and resolution of existing cross-cutting issues with the CAPE-OPEN platform, develop mechanisms for use of CAPE within other application domains, and incorporate advances in information technology into the CAPE-OPEN platform.”