The report starts with the charter of the Special Interest Group which remains unchanged since last year. The membership of the SIG remains also unchanged with Malcolm WOODMAN as leader, Michael HALLORAN and Michel PONS as contractors. The work process includes monthly conference calls to survey progress and identify actions, with Michael HALLORAN and Michel PONS implementing actions, testing and resolving defects.
Versioning has been a major activity. Future developments of the CO-LaN specifications will not easily fit into the currently applied versioning scheme. A number of discussions have taking place between the Interoperability SIG and the Methods & Tools SIG in order to define an appropriate versioning scheme. To speed up the evaluation of any new scheme, and hence speed up the decision on a new versioning scheme, the Interoperability SIG has developed criteria to test any versioning proposal. The criteria are based on a list of stakeholders and on how their requirements are fulfilled when exercizing a number of use cases.
The other activities of the Interoperability SIG have involved certification where a proposal for the self-certification suite has been made to the Board of Directors. To be noted: this activity is moved to a Certification SIG under elaboration with Malcolm WOODMAN contracted by CO-LaN to drive the creation.
The CAPE-OPEN Logging and Testing Tool has not been updated over the year while the number of downloads has remained equivalent to what took place in previous years. Regarding the installers for the CAPE-OPEN Type Libraries and Primary Interop Assemblies, a minor issue has been found thanks to KBC Advanced Technologies and a solution has to be experimented.
Looking forward: the Interoperability SIG will develop the installers for COBIA End-User Redistributable and COBIA Software Development Kit, using the same techniques as for the CAPE-OPEN TLBs/PIAs installers.
The report ends up with some thoughts on quality assurance, reflecting on the growing risk on the reputation of CO-LaN while CO-LaN is preparing the release of software which are can be considered very close to system files. Quality assurance requires access to multiple organisations with the necessary skills and resources in coding and distribution. CO-LaN has not established a proper quality assurance process.