Business Forum: November 19, 1996 (Houston) and December 10, 1996 (Behoust)
Agenda and Notes.
Migration SIG: November 20, 1996 (Houston) and December 11, 1996 (Behoust)
Agenda and Notes.
Action Items: Current List
Note: These notes are subject to review. Members are welcome
to send comments to Alan Doniger at Doniger@POSC.org.
Some presentation slide files are linked into the notes. Additional links
to presentations will be added as they are supplied. Notable changes to
the meeting notes will be summarized here.
Version 1. 23 Dec 96. First draft version with Migration
SIG notes only.
Version 2. 28 Jan 97. Second draft version with Business Forum and Migration
SIG notes.
These meeting notes supplement the meeting materials distributed to attendees. Issues and action items are highlighted. Sessions are arranged according to the meeting agenda.
Questions about POSC in general or about these meeting notes can be directed to Alan Doniger (Doniger@POSC.org) or Paul Maton (Maton@POSC.org).
Bob Pindell reviewed the activities and outcomes of the Board of Directors' Planning Meeting held in Ascot, U.K. in September.
A new membership category for organizations whose annual income is less than $1,000,000 was established, for which the annual fee will be $1000.
POSC's End Statements were reviewed. Only minor wording changes were needed for 1997 to reflect that POSC is not a formal standards organization, but as one tasked to create and maintain specifications which the Upstream Oil industry should adopt for use in technical information management.
On Compliance guidance, the Board charged POSC staff to improve the Compliance Statement Template, to establish a web based register of compliant software, tools and data products, and to study related options.
A review of POSC's funding model was initiated, with a move to self sufficiency as one possible target. A group studied funding options, and is beginning to understand issues. X/Open was one suggested as one possible model. A call for suggestions was made to the POSC membership.
The Board has asked the POSC staff to review the issues around intellectual property ownership and rights, as an anticipatory move as take-up progresses.
The Cambridge Energy Research Associates "Quiet Revolution", and POSC's role and relevance were noted, in particular the effort needed to get recognition of POSC in the resulting report.
Engineering standards and POSC/Caesar continue to present significant technical, organizational and cultural challenges. Closure has not been reached, and may await the outcome of decisions POSC and Caesar Offshore will take in the first quarter of 1997. These will determine what additional resources will be needed to proceed with the current plan for POSC to take over maintenance of the Caesar model in 1998 and beyond.
The sponsor directors reviewed their company take up strategies.
A compensation sub-committee was reactivated, and metrics were established to assess POSC's success in satisfying members' needs.
In Houston, Bill Bartz noted that the Board had tasked POSC staff establish some customer satisfaction metrics.
Bob's presentation (not available).
There were no questions to Bob in the Houston meeting.
Behoust Questions and Answers:
ACTION ITEM D.1: Bob Pindell and the Board will keep the membership informed about the progress of the Funding Committee.
Mary and Steve ...
In Houston, Mary Adams described the formation, mission and process of a team reviewing the POSC Business Forum and Migration SIG meetings.
This was followed by a brainstorming session in which attendees offered the following suggestions and comments. (Note: The top ideas are shown as combined and voted.)
Laramie Winczewski offered to help get access to the AAPG computer subcommittee.
ACTION ITEM E.1: Struby Overton will ask Laramie Winczewski to provide POSC with a contact on the AAPG computer subcommittee.
In Behoust, Steve Daum described concern that the Business Forum and Migration SIG meetings were in need of re-evaluation, and presented some slides reviewing their history and some recent activities by the meeting coordinators initiating the re-evaluation.
Here are links to Mary's presentation (not available) and Steve's presentation (in Power Point).
Behoust Questions and Answers:
Further brainstorming and discussion on the topic of the evolution of the POSC meetings continued in Behoust during the Facilitator's Discretion session in the afternoon to complete the feedback to be considered by the task force. The points raised included these:
Bill Bartz related results to date in the series of interviews of 40 E&P executives at or around the level of Asset Managers. Approximately half of the interviewees were U.S. based, and half international. They had been asked three questions:
Three categories of respondent emerged.
From these forty interviewees, two forums were targeted, each with about eight intended participants, and both in the U.S. One of the forums has happened to date, and it was frustrating that only four of the eight attendees who had committed to participate actually did so. They considered how best to convince management to adopt POSC standards. The conclusions were that:
It has been decided to let the executive understanding effort rest until the new year, particularly as POSC has initiated the process of appointing a Director of Marketing. Bill asked for ideas from the membership, and targeting of mid-level Asset managers was suggested as being the level at which awareness of information bottlenecks was high.
Houston Questions and Answers:
ACTION ITEM F.1: POSC member Business and Technical Contacts should work with operating company people to identify to POSC opportunities in their operating companies for the use of the specifications to help realize bottom-line benefits. Special note should be taken of opportunities for joint ventures with other POSC members.
In Behoust, after Bill Bartz presented the results of the Executive Awareness, he made several additional remarks developing these results. He said that rapid business change requires frequent alignment checks. Within the POSC membership, disagreements exist over whether to change specifications or to keep them static. Many users of knowledge work tools would rather be given additional functionality than integration through standards. There is considerable diversity among the sponsors. POSC must match our priorities with our resources. Yet we must strive for alignment with our market: needs must be distinguished from wants.
Behoust Questions and Answers:
ACTION ITEM F.2: Gary Hodge will request that Elf write an InfoPOSC article based on Philippe Chalon's presentation to the December Business Forum meeting describing the projects that have been done and the benefits that have been produced..
It was agreed to continue this line of discussion later in the day. This was done as part of the Facilitator's Discretion session. The additional discussion revealed a wide range of views. Some sponsors claim to have gained ample return on their investment in POSC, such as Texaco. Others are still waiting for more compliant products to emerge in the market place. Several attendees considered it reasonable that sponsors largely having funded POSC initially, that the burden should be more widely shared by both suppliers and consumers in the longer term. POSC's viability was no longer in doubt.
Bill asked each panel member to give an introductory presentation to be followed by a Question and Answer period.
John's presentation (not available yet).
The presentation (Behoust version, in Power Point).
Jean-Paul's presentation (in Power Point).
The presentation (in Power Point).
Houston Questions and Answers:
ACTION ITEM F.3: Gary Hodge will request that IBM write an InfoPOSC article describing their active projects, including the Project Data Store work, Puma, etc.
Behoust Questions and Answers:
Bob presented Cap Gemini's vision regarding POSC's mission and work.
Bob's presentation (not available).
Questions and Answers:
Bill reviewed the results of the Quiet Revolution study.
Bill's presentation (not available).
Questions and Answers:
Philippe described the state of acceptance of POSC within Elf, and the early benefits being derived mainly in the area of corporate data management, through the Archidex project which will implement PetroVision as Elf's corporate data store.
The need to hold indexes and to access data in repositories such as PetroBank in Norway and CDA in the UK was discussed as a potential use of a CORBA based architecture. Elf will index SEG-Y seismic tapes in Archidex rather than load seismic data into the POSC data store. Both top-down and bottom-up approaches are being used to promote the benefits of adopting POSC based solutions to E&P professional users.
Philippe's presentation (in Power Point).
Questions and Answers:
Stewart described the background and history of the several meetings he has coordinated among many international organizations working to develop and implement National Data Repositories. The first (April '96) meeting in London had consisted of seven established and six forming repository efforts.
Stewart's presentation (not available).
Houston Questions and Answers:
Behoust Questions and Answers:
Nico emphasized three aspects of integration of data management: the business drivers for it, the practice of it, and the technology supporting it. He also described the Life cycle of the Data Asset, and used the Carnegie Mellon SEI maturity model to qualify organizations' approach to data management, observing that few EP organizations had advanced beyond either the Initial or Recognizing categories. Nico challenged other companies to share Shell's data management process, a copy of the guideline manual for which was given to all attendees at these Business Forum meetings.
Nico's presentation (not available).
Questions and Answers:
Bill reported on the POSC/Caesar awareness meeting held immediately prior to the Houston Business Forum, and the apparent need for economies and efficiencies in information management in the Engineering and Construction part of E&P. Big opportunities were emerging in green field site projects where no legacy data existed with other common drivers, such as cut costs and operating environment. Sound information management practices would enable concurrent engineering, thereby reducing project cycle time. Lack of IT architecture is even more prevalent in E&C than in E&P.
Johan Skutle offered the POSC/Caesar team to make promotional presentations to individual companies.
There were no specific topics suggested in the Houston meeting.
Behoust Suggestions:
No questions were asked about prior action items in either meeting.
No new action items were created in the Houston meeting.
In Behoust, these action items were proposed:
This session consisted of two presentations. The first, prepared by Paul Duller and Martin Owen, explored the Quality movement and its relevance to the oil and gas industry. The second, prepared by John Evans and Alun Rowlands of Hays Information Management and Chris Eastment of Amerada Hess, addressed a specific case history of a project to match seismic data from two data sources.
The first presentation postulated that data is a 'real' E&P asset since it has strategic importance in determining the value of oil company value, i.e. reserves. This suggested the need to work on E&P data management and data quality. Several fundamental data problems were presented, including quality, volume, lack of standards, and poor catalogs. The Quality management movement was reviewed, including such leaders as Shewhart, Deming, Juran, Crosby, Feigenbaum, Townsend, and Peters. The main principles of each leader were presented and related to E&P data management. This led to a proposed eight-point action plan, including management commitment, data collection planning, teamwork, simple tools, management tools to achieve zero defects, customer and supplier identification, moving from a culture of inspection to one of prevention, and company-specific quality systems.
The second presentation was a case study of an attempt to match seismic navigation data to an asset register on line name. Direct matching was successful for less than 3% of the instances. This was found to be caused by changing standards, data duplication, data errors, different uses of punctuation, and company coding schemes. The plan-do-check-act approach (PDCA) of Deming was applied resulting in a program which included pre-processing, matching, and validation. The pre-processing steps including isolation of content from punctuation, stripping of prefixes and suffixes, and explicit mapping of changed seismic line names. Matching was attempted in several passes. Each pass applied relaxed match criteria to the still unmatched data. Associated data values were considered in addition to line name in the attempt to form probable matches. Validation found that 60% were matched on the first pass and of these half were high quality matches. After all four passes, the final success rate was about 90%. This structured methodology to legacy data matching will be generalized for future use.
The presentation (not available).
Houston Questions and Answers:
Behoust Questions and Answers:
Ross described the purpose of The Data Exchange (DAEX) product as being to support the use of Epicentre with legacy data. DAEX is both a set of working interfaces and a framework that can be used to build additional interfaces. DAEX benefits from the lessons learned by Oilfield Systems and the project sponsors in moving data. DAEX presents a common user interface. DAEX can be used in point-to-point and Epicentre load/unload roles. A recent application of DAEX is to move legacy data to SMDTI for Statoil. Epicentre subsets are the basis for the interfaces and data movement. Mention was made of Chevron's contribution to DAEX,e.g. for moving LIS data through DAEX and into OpenWorks.
Ross' presentation (in Power Point).
Houston Questions and Answers:
Behoust Questions and Answers:
Bill described Aangstrom's experience using the POSC Version 2.1 specifications with the VORTEXT product. He illustrated the results on the POSC Haddock data set. The POSC-defined relational projection and the POSC Sample Implementation DAEF are used. The Sample Implementation was successfully recompiled for the Sun Solaris operating system. (It is delivered by POSC on Sun OS.) Data access is through SQL for simple data types and through the POSC DAE API for complex data types.
Bill's presentation (not available).
Questions and Answers:
Armando is the VP of Market Development for TriTeal. He spoke about the Common Desktop Environment (CDE). He described the need to move beyond Motif to an open desktop environment. The CDE specification is managed by The Open Group (X/Open). TriTeal's CDE product has been ported to Windows 95 and NT as well as to Xterms.
Armando's presentation (in Power Point).
Questions and Answers:
D3b' Omega Project; Jean-Francois Rainaud (Beicip-Franlab) in Behoust
Jean-Francois described the work of Beicip-Franlab as the software distributed for IFP with offices in France and Houston. He described the OMEGA Project, its sponsors, and its objective to provide 3D modeling toolkits for application developers over the project's two-year duration. The toolkits are targeted for UNIX and NT. The basis for the work is Matra Datavision's CAS.CADE software factory and class libraries. The intent to have POSC and STEP compliant data management and to use OMG CORBA for distributed object management. The 3D graphic interface will be based on Open Inventor. This work involves the reservoir characterization portion of Epicentre. Proposals are planned to place STEP data type representations into Epicentre and to define a suitable subset for delivery to POSC. Collaboration with other POSC-related work efforts is anticipated, e.g. with RESCUE, Interoperability and Business Objects, and OpenSpirit.
Jean-Francois' presentation Part 1 and Part 2 (in Power Point).
Questions and Answers:
Gianluigi and Clara discussed the management and access of business data objects using the QMapper tool suite. The tools can be used to define mappings from legacy data sources. There is an interactive subsetting tool that can define subsets with or without the Epicentre subsetting rules in place. There is a template or business data object building tool that can generate EXPRESS-I and can generate data extract statements in POSC's DAE Data Access Language (an extended SQL). There is also a generic data browser.
The presentation (in Power Point).
Houston Questions and Answers:
Behoust Questions and Answers:
D3d Epicentre Data Exchange Via the Internet; Stewart Robinson (UK DTI) in Houston, Pierre Chevalier (Cap Gemini) in Behoust
Stewart described the movement of data in and out of the UK Department of Transportation and Industry (DTI). The most common media for data coming in is paper. The most common media for data going out is microform. The objective is move data digitally based on POSC specifications. Achieving this depends on CIDAI achieving POSC compliance. In the meantime and while Epicentre is not widely used by the oil companies in the UK, there is an effort to gradually introduce the use of the semantics of Epicentre. Having discovered the utility of the World Wide Web, it was decided to begin by publishing 14 basic items of well data via the Web. Each item comes with both a DTI definition and an Epicentre footprint (in the form of a spreadsheet). This work may be seen on the DTI's Web Site (http://www.dti.gov.uk/og/posc_exchange/ukwell.htm). Stewart asked for feedback from POSC members. More types of data will be added in the future.
In Behoust, Pierre described the same work effort reported by Stewart in Houston. He covered the Web facility with selection criteria in a form readable directly (ASCII) based on Epicentre semantics. DAEX is being considered for moving data from DTI's data base to this facility. The process involved data mapping, production of data and transfer via DAEX, and the development of the Web facility software. The user interface selects on quadrant and block to obtain a list of wells. Choosing a well causes the display of data in name-value format. Data item names can be clicked to obtain the Epicentre definition in a tabular form similar to EXPRESS-I. Users can receive data via email or can save a file directly. The next steps for the project is to evaluate feedback, extend to 6500 wells, improve performance, expand scope of data, and address bad quality data through business rules.
The presentation (Behoust version, in Power Point).
Houston Questions and Answers:
Behoust Questions and Answers:
Ross gave a brief overview of the activities of the Petroleum Science and Technology Institute (PSTI). This was essentially the same presentation Ross gave about PSTI at the September POSC Migration SIG meeting in Nottingham.
Ross's presentation (not available).
Questions and Answers:
John gave a brief overview of Project Discovery and then spoke about the current project activities related to Phase II, Seismic Subset, Woodman review and testing. Most of the testing is being performed at the POSC offices in Houston and at the QC Data offices in Calgary. The primary testing objective in Calgary is to benchmark PPDM Version 3.4. The primary testing objective in Houston is to test access via POSC's DAE API.
There are a small number of specific issues, such as the corner point access example, in which performance similar to what has been achieved using PPDM Version 3.4 has not been achieved using direct SQL access to the current projected subset. There appear to be several ways that these issues may be addressed, including changes to Epicentre, changes to the projection methods, etc.
The Ironman deliverable is due in early December. It may be appropriate to hold a workshop on lessons learned next January or February. Project plans call for Well Data and then Production Data to be addressed in succeeding project phases.
Phase 3 will start in 97Q1 addressing well, production, and drilling.
John's presentation (Power Point).
Houston Questions and Answers:
Behoust Questions and Answers:
Ben and Steve gave some brief background on the OpenSpirit initiative. The Cooperation Agreement is due to be finalized at the December 2-3 core team meeting. The selection of a Custodian is in stage two and is expected to be completed in January '97. An early adopter program is hoped to begin by May '97.
Their presentation (not available).
Houston Questions and Answers:
Behoust Questions and Answers:
Karl spoke about three things: Informix as a company, current work with the POSC specifications, and future plans. Currently, an Epicentre relational projection is being implemented with Informix using the DAEF Sample Implementation for complex data types. In '97, Epicentre and DAE will be implemented on Informix's Universal Server (object-relational DBMS) using Data Blade Modules for the complex data types. Universal Server has been built from Informix and Illustra -- both of which are based on the same fundamental work.
Karl's presentation (in Power Point).
Houston Questions and Answers: (none)
Behoust Questions and Answers:
Nigel described the current status of WIME. The purpose is to define standard activity classes and to state data model requirements in the area of well operations. Participants include Statoil, Saga, and BP. Supplier participants include Sysdrill, Schlumberger, and Landmark. POSC and Essence are also participants. Since September, there have been five workshops to establish a foundation and begin identifying and describing activities. State transition diagrams are being drawn. There are plans to follow a open process, including the issuance of a Request for Technology.
Nigel's presentation (in Power Point).
Questions and Answers:
Nigel described recent progress on the E&P software registry. The purpose is to improve the procurement process. Participation so far has come from Amerada Hess, Statoil, and Oilfield Systems. Activities and Business Objects lists have been provided to the Interoperability and Business Objects work effort. (www.essence.co.uk/essence)
Nigel's presentation (in Power Point).
Steve described the current work of the URGENT alliance to generate business requirements for IT to address in areas of change. There is not a lot of detailed understanding in the E&P community of how to make good use of the POSC specifications, i.e. integration, information sharing, etc. URGENT is trying to help correct this problem. Oil company participants are Statoil, Agip, and Hydro. Other participants include The Information Store, Paras, TNO, PDS, and POSC. URGENT uses a formal process modeling methodology and tool (Systematic Technique for Role and Interaction Modeling). URGENT is targeting four case studies -- each one for a participating oil company. Steve suggested the need for a common understanding of the "Shared Earth Model" as it relates to various E&P life cycle processes. Another URGENT workshop is planned for January 27th.
Here are Steve's presentation (not available) and a link to the URGENT Web Site (www.pds.nl/urgent).
Questions and Answers:
Ton presented Oracle's overall technology approach which is to work towards object-oriented functionality based on SQL3 with the next release of the Oracle Server. The division in Oracle focused on energy, Oracle Energy, intends to work with POSC members and third parties to build upon standard Oracle products to develop products to meet the needs of the POSC community.
Oracle believes Epicentre's use of an object-oriented data modeling approach (without methods) is a big barrier to POSC Take-Up . Epicentre is not based on a standard entity-relationship approach. An ISO-standard, the EXPRESS information modeling language, has been chosen as the basis for Epicentre's definition. Ton said that until now, there have been no commercial tools to work with EXPRESS. Ton stated that as a result of the lack of EXPRESS tools, people doing Take-Up use the relational projection of Epicentre provided by POSC.
Oracle Upstream Data Model Loader is a new product that reads and parses EXPRESS data models. It resolves and maps them to Oracle Designer/2000 as standard entity-relationship data models. This allows people skilled in entity-relationship data models to work with "Epicentre." [Editor's note: This involves working with Oracle's "entity-relationship projection" of Epicentre rather than with Epicentre itself.] Physical data base design can be done using the standard facilities of Oracle Designer/2000. Ton said that data model subsets can be defined, POSC Data Stores can be built, and POSC-compliant applications can be generated. [
This product has been internally developed by Oracle based on requirements obtained from some oil companies. The product is in beta-test now. It is anticipated to be in "production" in two weeks. The target market is the POSC membership. Oracle will use the product internally to develop additional products and services. (A demonstration was offered to attendees during the day.).
Ton's presentation (not available).
Questions and Answers:
Olivier described Log Viewer, described in earlier meetings by Mike Zeitlin of Texaco as part of the Kern River system. In order to make Log Viewer cross-platform capable, Olivier proposed to rewrite Log Viewer in Java. Using Java has many advantages, but Olivier noted problems with graphics performance, data access, and hardcopy support. An INT product, Carnac C++, solves these problems and can be used in an improved, Java-based Log Viewer. He stated that a CORBA / IIOP approach may be best for data access. Completion of the Java-based Log Viewer is planned for end of Q1 of '97.
Olivier's presentation (not available).
Questions and Answers:
Jim presented and compared ISO/STEP exchange technology and POSC exchange technology. He covered architectural features, specification architecture, and exchange message definition. For ISO/STEP, Jim explained Application Activity Models (AAM's), Application Reference Models (ARM's), Application Interpreted Models (AIM's), Integration Resources (IR's), Conformance Classes, and the relationships among them. He noted that the objective for exchange in ISO/STEP is limited to passing a subset (often corresponding to a conformance class and an activity model data flow) from one system to another. Issues addressed by POSC, such as asset life cycle data model, shared data stores, concurrent data access, data model based data extraction, exchange profiles, and data merging, are outside the scope of ISO/STEP as currently defined. Jim also noted that some users of ISO/STEP are attempting to define architectures for data exchange (and data sharing) that go beyond current ISO/STEP technology in response to business drivers. There are efforts inside ISO/STEP to attempt to recognize and address such requirements.
Jim's presentation (not available).
Jenny gave an update on the ongoing process to define the scope and timing of the next release of the POSC specifications. She described a proposal based on prior work up to and including the Next Release Workshops held in September (Nottingham) and October (Houston). The proposal is contained in a provisional Work Plan document and other documents posted on the POSC Web Site. She invited member feedback on the proposal. The member feedback period will close in mid-January.
The proposal calls for the next release to be a 'minor' release to be named Version 2.2 rather than a large release. The proposal is based on the belief that there will be value to the membership in addressing a number of issues with a mid-1997 release and that this can be done without making any major, structural changes to Epicentre. These issues include resolving the 'preferred value' request and addressing remaining feedback from SAVE and Project Discovery. One technical workshop is planned as part of the development of Version 2.2. This will be on Rock Features and Materials (not Earth Model as a whole) and will be scheduled in Europe (London office, January 23) and in America (Houston office, January 16). This area has been found to be too inflexible, e.g. when trying to load formation top picks. As pending requests are addressed, they will be posted on the Web Site for member feedback.
Work on current major issues, such as property modeling, will continue with the intention of implementing solutions in Version 3.0. It is not anticipated that work on Version 2.2 will delay the timing of Version 3.0.
Jenny reminded attendees that they may follow the discussion and feedback about the next release by subscribing to the email discussion group called next-release@POSC.org.
Jenny referred attendees to a Request for Proposal on Migration Tools that has been posted on the POSC Web Site.
Jenny's presentation (not available yet).
Houston Questions and Answers:
Behoust Questions and Answers:
This session was combined into E2 above.
This session was combined into E2 above.
In Houston, Tom reviewed the Business Forum discussion about future meetings. He listed the types of meeting under consideration as: Business Forum, Migration SIG, technical workshops and work groups, Annual Member Meeting, and industry exhibitions / AIMS-like meetings. It is both the content and audience for the meetings that are under review.
Tom reviewed the top three suggestions from the Houston Business Forum as being:
Tom asked for suggestions regarding the question: Should meetings be repeated in Europe and America?
In Behoust, Mary picked up the discussion from yesterday about Facilitators Listen - Meeting Organization. She presented the top three ideas from the Houston meetings. She asked for ideas from attendees.
Ideas Offered:
She showed slides illustrated Possible Guidelines and facilitated further discussion:
Mary wrapped-up the discussion and advised the attendees to watch for news via email and on the POSC Web Site.
Houston Suggestions:
Behoust Suggestions:
There were no comments or questions on prior action items.
No new formal action items were created in the either Migration SIG meeting.