The Methods & Tools Special Interest Group (M&T SIG) met from 5 pm till 6:30 pm Central European Time.
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)
Agenda: development of Persistence Common interface specification.
Highlights
Jasper van BATEN had no time to review either the Parameter or the Reporting Common interface specifications. Prior to this meeting, Michel PONS provided to the M&T SIG his revision of the Persistence Common interface specification document.
The conference call was consequently devoted to the development of the Persistence Common interface specification.
Context: so far, in the CAPE-OPEN standard, persistence mechanisms provided by middleware such as COM and CORBA have been used. With the development of a CAPE-OPEN specific middleware (COBIA), CO-LaN develops its own interface specification for persistence. The proposed interface specification introduces two general concepts: Persistence Host (PH), most likely a PME (but not only), and Persistable Object (PO), typically a Process Modelling Component that may be configured (Unit Operations implementing ICapeUtilities::Edit are examples).
The first item discussed and acted upon was the definition of IsDirty as a property of the ICapePersist interface rather than as an operation. The COBIA IDL is already considering IsDirty as a property so the point is to make the textual specification consistent with the COBIA IDL, in order to minimize the consequences for the organizations already making use of the COBIA IDL.
Next Requirement labeled so far REQ-PH-01 was discussed. It pertains to the need for the PH to store the information needed to create the PO when reloading a Flowsheet containing that PO.
Then explanations about requirement REQ-PO-02 (Any Object Manager is not a Persistable Object) were discussed. Mostly this requirement is in line with the Errata & Clarifications published on persistence according to COM.
The title of REQ-PH-04 was modified to a better wording. It still reflects that the data store is supplied by the PH to the PO for its internal data.
Requirement REQ-PH-05 states that the PH must allow the PO to write to the data store. The exact wording was revised while the meaning was kept the same.
Next conference call is scheduled for January 22, 2020.
