The World Wide Web Consortium has created a new group that is charged with documenting and building consensus around Web architectures being used by the consortium as it develops protocols.
The mission of the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG), which has been discussed for about a year, also includes resolving issues involving Web architecture and coordinating cross-technology architecture developments both within the W3C and with groups outside of the consortium.
As the work of the W3C has evolved and become more complex, members saw the need for a horizontal-looking group to take control of the Web architectures being used by the myriad groups inside the consortium, said Ian Jacobs, technical editor for the W3C and the team contact for the TAG.
“We found that different working groups were going off in different directions” as far as the Web architectures were concerned, said Jacobs, in Brooklyn, N.Y.
The goal of the TAG is to make the work of the W3C easier and “to grease the skids a little,” Jacobs said. “People can go into work presuming theyve read the documents and will not be reinventing the wheel.”
Among the issues the TAG will address will be how the various W3C technologies fit together and what basics people must know before they start developing new technology.
Five TAG members, all W3C members, were elected by the consortium membership, and another three were appointed by the director, Tim Berners-Lee.
Those elected are: Paul Cotton, of Microsoft Corp.; Roy Fielding, of eBuilt Inc. and chairman of the Apache Software Foundation; David Orchard, of BEA Systems Inc.; Norman Walsh, of Sun Microsystems Inc.; and Stuart Williams, of Hewlett-Packard Co.
The three appointed by Berners-Lee are: Tim Bray, of Antarcti.ca Systems Inc., and Dan Connolly and Chris Lilley, both of the W3C.
Jacobs said he expects the TAG to meet for the first time within a month.