Upcoming URN standard

URN is being standardized inside ITU-T Study Group 17: Data Networks and Telecommunication Software. SG 17 is responsible for the maintenance of the MSC, SDL, TTCN, and ASN.1 languages at ITU-T, as well as connections to UML. Question 18/17 (formerly Q12/10) relates to URN: User Requirements Notation. The intent is to create a standard by September 2003. As of February 2002, the Q.18/17 Rapporteur and Chair of the URN Focus Group is Daniel Amyot, University of Ottawa.

What is an ITU-T Focus Group?

The objective of focus groups is to help advance the work of the ITU-T parent study group and to encourage the participation of members of other standards organizations, including experts and individuals who may not be members of ITU. Procedures and working methods are established to facilitate the financing of focus groups, the completion of work on a well-defined topic and the documentation of the results. Please consult Recommendation A.7 (10/2000) for more information.

Help Us Shape URN!

The URN Focus Group leads most of the technical development of URN. At the moment, it is mainly composed of researchers and practitioners from industry (Mitel, Nortel, KLOCwork, Rational, Telelogic, Phillips, and others) and academia (Carleton U. and U. of Ottawa for UCMs, U. of Toronto for GRL, and others), but it is expanding and is open to all interested contributors. Please contact us if you are interested in collaborating/contributing. Your ideas, comments, suggestions, and expertise are much needed and would be most appreciated. The active participation of people from different countries and companies (both users and tool vendors) is necessary for URN to succeed!

What are the URN Requirements

A list of requirements for the design and standardization of URN has been collected: Focus on early stages of design, with scenarios Capture user requirements when little design detail is available No messages, components, or component states required Reusability of scenarios and allocation to components Dynamic refinement capabilities Modelling of agent systems, early performance analysis, and early detection of undesirable interactions Express, analyse and deal with non-functional requirements (NFRs) Express the relationship between business objectives/goals and system requirements Capture reusable analysis (argumentation) and design knowledge (patterns) for addressing non-functional requirements Connect to other ITU-T languages and to UML