Desktop Agent Bridging Discussion group 26th April 2023

kriswest commented 1 year ago

Group overview

Discussion group for developing proposals for producing bridges between FDC3 implementations (aka Desktop Agents), allowing applications running on one Desktop Agent, to integrate with FDC3 applications running on a second Desktop Agent for the same user.

The interop between applications running on different Desktop Agents aka Platforms would ideally cover

Channels
Raising and resolving Intents
Launching Applications

PR: https://github.com/finos/FDC3/pull/968 PR preview Specification link

Relevant issue tags

Current open issues that relate to the above concepts with the label:
The original issue is now a github discussion where content can be added and this issue discussed:
544

Meeting Date

Wednesday 26 Apr 2023 - 9am EST / 2pm GMT

WebEx info

Meeting link: https://finos.webex.com/finos/j.php?MTID=m55d4aa79e148c948bf53163690e74fee
Meeting number: 2558 920 8729

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Access code: 2558 920 8729

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Agenda

[x] Convene & roll call, review meeting notices (5mins)
[x] Review action items from previous meeting (5mins)
- 935
[x] Desktop Agent Bridging PR overview
[x] Next Steps (Voting)
[x] Updates from the BackPlane project
[x] AOB & Adjourn (5mins)

Minutes

A summary of discussions with the BackPlane project on automated testing (with input from @glenn) of BackPlane/bridge clients and the creation of an AsyncAPI spec was provided.
- Keep variables in testing low:
- Create unit tests for a client first
- Create internal unit tests for bridge server where possible
- Use the tested client to create integration tests for client and server
- AsyncAPI should be applicable to the bridging spec.
- When the message JSONSchemas are complete we can use them to assemble a detailed asyncAPI spec (and gain dynamic docs ala redoc for openAPI, code generation for tests/clients/server stubs in multiple languages .
@kriswest and @tpina provided a run-through of the pr #968
- Added documentation to FDC3 website as a 5th Part including a main specification and reference docs for each message exchange.
- Experimental flag applied to feature throughout
- Minor additions to API types (marked experimental) as it makes sense to keep API types together
- Created JSONSchema definitions for all Bridging connect and interop messages - involving lots of manual review and refinement
- Added schemas for API types (for when they are encoded in JSON)
- Used to generate (duplicate) Typescript sources (minus any API function signatures) for Bridging implementations
- Reorganized schemas (including existing Context schemas) into a /schemas folder, with a folder per type (context/api/bridging)
- this keeps the reference paths the same whether working with them locally or through the website (previously you could only work through the published schemas on the web as the reference paths would change)
- Adjusted quicktype code generation scripts to include bridging and API schemas
- Added generated code for bridging to NPM module.
@robmoffat & @mattjamieson discussed the potential for the message exchanges to be used within FDC3 for Web browsers solutions, or internally in desktop agent implementations
- Lots of reuse possibilities for the schemas/approach
- May need very minor change on addressing (remove targeting to Desktop Agents if scoped within a single agent), but otherwise generally applicable
Consent was requested and received for raising the PR with the FDC3 SWG meeting for inclusion in FDC2.1
- Proposal of an email vote on inclusion was suggested/recommend by @kriswest and @mattjamieson
@Vivek-NatWest discussed the generation of an AsyncAPI schema incorporating all the message schemas as the ideal next step for the BackPlane project.

Action Items

[x] @kriswest Propose Desktop Agent Bridging as a new Part of the FDC3 Standard at the Standards Working Group - an email vote on inclusion is recommended.
[x] @mattjamieson Test generated typescript files for bridging as part of his bridging demo
[x] @Vivek-NatWest Test bridging JSON schemas as a part of an async API specification that could be added to the documentation and/or used to generate tests, client libraries and server stubs.
[ ] all review the PR and comment on any issues found
- 968