NOST News:
Results of Spring 2003 CCSDS International Standards Workshop

By John Garrett and Donald Sawyer

Panel 2 of the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) held its spring 2003 workshop from 30 March - 4 April 2003. The workshop was held at the European Space Agency facility in Frascati, Italy.. This spring's Panel 2 meeting proved to be a time of changes. Some archiving standards have been published, others are just becoming draft standards and still other efforts are just getting underway. The XML thrusts within Panel 2 are continuing to develop as dominant themes for current and future work. And software tools supporting previous standards are being enhanced resulting in ever increasing use of the Panel 2 standards.

The CCSDS Panel 2 meeting opened with its sessions on archiving standards. The CCSDS Standard Reference Model for Open Archival Information Systems (OAIS) has now been published as ISO Standard 14721:2003. The OAIS Reference Model is being used far beyond the Space Domain. It is showing up in important ways in several National Archives and National Libraries efforts including the Library of Congress' National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) as well as in emerging implementations in the Aeronautical and Space domains.

Work is progressing well on the Producer-Archive Interface Methodology Abstract Standard. The Panel document was reviewed and approved for release as a draft standard. The document will be undergoing formal review by the Space Agencies and the general public for the next couple of months and plans are for it to become an approved CCSDS standard by the end of the year. Another important development in this area is the creation of prototypes of supporting software tools.

Work is also beginning on Archive Certification. To best leverage our contacts and our resources, the certification work is led by the Research Libraries Group with liaison from CCSDS. We expect to have continued strong Panel 2 participation in those efforts.

Panel 2 is examining the use of XML in the packaging of data. They are building on the ideas from the original Structure and Construction rules Blue Book, as well as the Information Packing concepts from the Open Archival Information Systems (OAIS) Reference Model. The concepts embodied in the OAIS Reference Model have been used by a number of other groups and the Panel 2 has collected and used the best of these ideas. The Panel has a rapid development programme underway to bring forward a draft standard by the end of the year.

The EAST Data Description Language and the Data Entity Dictionary Specification Language standards are making usage inroads in an ever-wider range of projects. This is primarily due to the continuing work on EAST tool development at the French Space Agency, CNES. There were several reports on project usage and the status of tool development.

And finally there were reports on significant efforts on the part of Panel 2 members to provide input to the Orbit Data Messages draft standard as well as to the work of the Architecture Working Group.

This may have been the last CCSDS meeting as Panel 2. CCSDS has been reorganizing and efforts formerly under CCSDS Panel 2 have now become part of the Mission Operations and Information Management Area. We would like to extend our congratulations to all the current and past CCSDS Panel 2 participants. Their professionalism and their dedication to the space data industry has greatly benefited all those who have had a chance to use the many standards produced over the last 18 years. We have been honored to work with them and expect to continue working with many under the new organization.