This document defines the OGC Engineering Report life cycle to be applied to OGC Interoperability Program Initiatives, in particular Testbeds. Further integration into the OGC Standardization Program may require further discussion. The goal is to harmonize the engineering report development procedure and to ensure a concise implementation schedule.

Rationale

The following arguments have been taken into account to develop the ER development process as described herein:

  1. The uptake of research and development results documented in ERs carries broader importance to advancing the OGC Standards Baseline.

  2. ERs contain important material for the OGC standards development process. It is important that all information is carefully reviewed by affected SWGs/DWGs.

  3. Interoperability Program Activities such as testbeds are the OGC technology and engineering laboratories. Acquired experiences made during testbeds may be of further value to the wider OGC community, even though ideas and approaches might have been discarded during the activity.

ER States

Each ER undergoes a series of distinct states. Each state allows multiple iterations:

  1. Initial draft ER (IER): Any ER starts with an inquiry by the editor to SWG/DWGs to obtain commitment for review. An ER receives the IER status once a SWG/DWG has agreed to review the future document. The final iteration of the IER is forwarded to SWG/DWG review.

  2. Draft ER (DER): A SWG/DWG performs a review on the IER and adds - in addition to any comments and editorial changes - a section to the ER that explains the relationship of this ER to the current and planned SWG activities. The ER is then returned to the editor as a DER. The editors reviews the comments and uploads the final version to the OGC portal’s pending documents section eventually.

  3. Public ER (PER): Positively voted on ER that will be made available to the public.

An editor might identify any number of working groups relevant for an ER. In this case, the editor shall select the most appropriate working group (primary working group) for ER review and send a notification to all other relevant working groups (secondary working groups) to raise awareness.

The IER and DER states allow multiple iterations without changing the official OGC document identifier. Once the ER is uploaded to the OGC portal’s pending documents section, updates require document number revision extensions.

ER Format

ER shall be published as HTML-encoded Web pages and PDF for archiving. To facilitate the multiple format release process, any Testbed-12 ER shall be delivered in Asciidoc. An Asciidoc template has been made available on the OGC portal. The template shall be used during the entire ER development process, i.e. IER, DER and PER do not differ in format.

There are may tools available to support the Asciidoc development process. The simplest include a text editor and a compiler, please see Asciidoc.org for details. There are platform independent tools available also. OGC has made good experiences with AsciidocFX, available free of charge at Asciidocfx.com.

ER Development Procedure

The ER development procedure defines a number of steps:

  1. Each ER editor needs to identify the primary SWG/DWG for ER review.

  2. Each ER editor needs to discuss the ER with the identified SWG/DWG and receive confirmation upon doing the review. For that purpose, the editor retrieves a document number from the OGC portal and provides document number, document title, an abstract and an initial outline to the SWG.

  3. Once a working group has agreed to review the ER, it receives IER status.

  4. The editor develops the IER.

  5. Editor submits the final IER to the SWG/DWG. The IER must include a section "what does this ER mean for the SWG and OGC in general" from the editor’s perspective.

  6. The editor presents the IER to the SWG/DWG to allow for efficient review.

  7. The SWG/DWG must provide comments and a section "how does this ER relates to the work we do" from the SWG/DWG perspective (might be identical with the editor’s perspective).

  8. The SWG/DWG returns the ER to the editor. With the review and additional section provided by the SWG/DWG, the ER receives the DER status

  9. The editor checks for comments, applies appropriate changes (iterations with SWG/DWG allowed but not necessary) and puts the DER on OGC portal’s section pending documents.

  10. OGC members are informed about the new DER and are requested to review and provide comments.

  11. Editors receive comments from reviwers and apply changes appropriately

  12. Editors inform OGC staff that the ER is ready for publication. Once published, the ER status changes to PER.

Editors are expected to follow the ER release process till it is released to the public.