Working Groups and Specifications

The Content Reference Forum has chartered four working groups (WGs) to accomplish its technical goals. These are the Requirements and Architecture WG, the Content References WG,  the Contract Expression Language WG, and the References Services WG.

Requirements and Architecture Working Group

Mission

The Requirements and Architecture Working Group (RAWG) will establish and maintain architectural requirements and the architecture for Content Reference Framework-based systems, and will develop the required Profiles to validate the applicability of the architecture to "real world" problems.

Scope

The focus of the RAWG is to describe and maintain the vision of the reference architecture and to enable—often via other Content Reference Forum working groups—selection and development of the elements that make this vision possible. RAWG's emphasis is on finding the appropriate standards that have been developed in other standards groups and can be applied to meeting the forum's architectural requirements. As needed, RAWG can call for evaluation of technologies and standards to meet specified requirements. Only when the needed specifications cannot be found elsewhere, does RAWG recommend development of new specifications. Examples of such developments are the content references and the language for electronically capturing and applying contractual obligations to the content reference information.

RAWG is tasked to establish interoperable guidelines for development of systems using multiple interrelated standards and specifications and working across different types of media and devices. To achieve that, RAWG is relying on a concept of "Profiles". A Profile is simply a set of constrained specifications that are chosen to work together to achieve a specific set of solutions. The first chartered profile is the "Baseline Profile" for interaction of software agents on Internet-enabled computer-based platforms. The Baseline Profile is also intended as the specification for interoperability between different usage domains. The initial release of the Baseline Profile set of specifications is targeted for December 10, 2003.

Content References Working Group

Mission

The mission of the Content References Working Group (CRWG) is to develop data and messaging formats for use in Content Reference (CR) systems. The data formats developed by the group are the current and future formats identified in the Content Reference Architecture (CRA) under development in the Requirements and Architecture Working Group (RAWG).

Scope

The CRWG defines data formats that are used to express content and context within and among Content Reference-aware systems. The group defines formats to express abstract content identification and description, consumption environment description, value chains, and offers. These formats are assembled into higher-level messages that are used to convey requests and responses between system nodes..

Contract Expression Language Working Group

Mission

The Contract Expression Language Working Group (CELWG) will develop the Contract Expression Language (CEL) specification and its associated XML core and extension schemas.  The objective of CEL is to express the contractual agreements between the value chain participants within the Content Reference Framework in an unambiguous, interoperable, human readable and machine interpretable manner.

Scope

The focus of the CELWG is to develop the CEL specification and its associated XML core and extension schemas. As defined in the Content Reference Architecture Framework, a Reference Service asynchronously accepts standalone content references, transforms them into other content references—either standalone references or offers, based on MPEG Rights Expression Language (REL).  The transformations depend on the business logic programmed into the Reference Service. To ensure consistent and predictable behavior among Reference Services and to reduce programming complexity, CELWG is chartered to capture the Reference Service business logic in a single, standard, interoperable Contract Expression Language.  In addition to the typical expression language requirements such as modularity, extensibility, and un-ambiguity, CEL is capable of expressing contractual terms including permissions, obligations, prohibitions, and exclusivity.  CEL leverages the MPEG REL design concepts and language elements to reach high compatibility with MPEG REL based offers, distribution licenses, and usage licenses used extensively within the CRF framework.

References Services Working Group

Mission

This Working Group will determine 1) internal interfaces among Reference Server sub-components, 2) external interfaces with other modules within the CR Framework and 3) transactions within a reference service network that consists of multiple reference servers.

Scope

Internal interfaces are to be determined based on the design of the Content Reference Architecture (CRA). The major component of the Reference Server is the CR processor that processes CRs and return Offers based on the contract. The RSWG starts with determining the sub-components of a standalone Reference Server of which interfaces are to be standardized. The standardization is to be done in the way so that implementers of Reference Servers can have the freedom to implement within the defined parameters