Membership Consensus Sought in Specification Evolution

Contents

Introduction

POSC is committed to understanding and meeting the needs of its membership. In order to better serve these needs we have established a more responsive business model. Projects are organized in three ways:

We have several ways to communicate and validate our understanding of members' needs. These include the open process, our meetings and workshops, and the ability of staff members to interact directly with members on specific projects. All of these mechanisms provide feedback to POSC about the goals of the POSC community. The review process for changes to our specifications remains unchanged and in force.

However, we must continually improve our alignment with the needs of membership. Therefore, we are seeking direction in our efforts in specification evolution (Category I). Since membership fees support the maintenance and evolution of the POSC specifications changes must reflect the broad consensus of the membership.

Immediate vs. Members' Choice Projects

We have proposed a slate of work that follows the basic commitments of POSC. This work falls into two broad categories. First are projects or work that have immediate recognized value, are already in progress, or are internal to the management of the POSC organization. Second, there are optional projects that we are characterizing as members' choice, as we only intend to pursue optional projects that have broad appeal to the POSC membership. There are many more members' choice projects available than can be accommodated in a single business year.

Examples of immediate work include answering member questions about the specifications and providing examples or implementation guidance. The specific projects we intend to pursue in this budget cycle are summarized in Appendix A: Synopsis of Immediate, Internal or Ongoing Projects Planned for 1998-1999. Again, this is work that POSC has either previously committed to, addresses known problems, or are of an internal management nature. For more information on each project, follow the links in Appendix A to the individual project summary worksheets.

The members' choice projects are of a different nature. These items may represent a higher cost, have a smaller interest group, or represent a pivotal decision. Our success in these directions require the early support and involvement of the membership. This helps ensure that such work is aligned with the business drivers of the member organizations. We have proposed a project slate in the section below (Specification Evolution Members' Choice Projects Proposed for 1998-1999). All of the projects considered may be found in Appendix B: Projects Considered but Currently Deferred. For more information on each project, follow the links in Appendix B to the individual project summary worksheets.

Finally, please remember that ongoing and planned collaborative development projects, such as the WIME Follow-on, Business Objects and Interoperability and Shared Earth Model are not included in this list. See the section below (Relationship to Collaborative Development Projects) for a statement regarding that class of work.

Giving Feedback to POSC

Under normal circumstances, POSC will hold workshops to solicit feedback on the proposed slate of optional project work. Because this is a new process, however, we are foregoing the workshops this time to expedite our 1998 work plan. Instead we are requesting that you fill out the web-based feedback form referenced below. You may also e-mail your opinions on the proposed slate of projects to help@posc.org. We encourage you to do this, as we will consider those comments carefully and adjust the work plan if necessary.

Specification Evolution - Members' Choice Projects Proposed for 1998-1999

The following projects were selected by the POSC staff from many options. The options were evaluated and ranked according to our understanding of the interests and priorities of our diverse membership. The order below is not significant.

Geodetics - changes to Epicentre and adding reference instances

Description: POSC members and the European Petroleum Survey Group have suggested various changes to Epicentre to improve the geodetic model and bring it into line with current best practices used in the industry.

Estimated POSC Staff Resources: 2 person-weeks (Click here for other details)

Probability and Risk - changes to Epicentre and changes to the DAE

Description: This project will extend Epicentre to handle values dealing with probability. This capability is necessary to address the fundamental E&P business issues related to risk analysis and resource assessment. In addition to addressing data modeling/representation issues surrounding probability, the project will address the means of intelligently querying such values in a data store.

Estimated POSC Staff Resources: 18 person-months (Click here for other details)

Multi-Dimension Array Data Types - changes to Epicentre

Description: It is becoming common place for measurement and analysis tools used in the E&P industry to produce data represented in more than three dimensions. This project will add new Epicentre data types to allow for storage of this hyper-spatial data. The DAE is already capable of dealing with up to 15-D data, so changes to the DAE specification are not anticipated.

Estimated POSC Staff Resources: 2 person-months (Click here for other details)

Well/Wellbore completion classes - changes to Epicentre and adding reference instances

Description: The current version of Epicentre allows for ambiguous methods for classifying wells, wellbores and completions. This project will simplify the usage and understanding of well, wellbore, and completion classification by consolidating the different classification techniques into a consistent classification scheme.

Estimated POSC Staff Resources: 2 person-weeks (Click here for other details)

Add well log service classes - changes to Epicentre and adding reference instances

Description: Members have indicated that usage of well log trace data in Epicentre could be improved by the introduction of service classes. Having well log trace service classes, which are a higher level classification of the generic well log trace classes currently in Epicentre, will make it easier to query for desired well log traces. This project will modify Epicentre to accommodate service classes, add service class instances to the reference data and then connect those service classes to the appropriate existing well log trace classes.

Estimated POSC Staff Resources: 3 person-months (Click here for other details)

Resource assessment - changes to Epicentre and adding reference instances

Description: Exploration work processes begin at a conceptual level and progress through a series of evaluations and assessments that support decision making. Typically data are collected at various levels of this process. The industry refers to these points as plays, leads and prospects. Decisions made at each point in the process may ultimately lead to the drilling of prospects, which may culminate in discoveries, which become fields. Currently Epicentre does not address the concepts of plays, leads and prospects. This project would extend Epicentre to deal with this kind of data, thereby making it capable of supporting the full life cycle of resource assessment.

Estimated POSC Staff Resources: 1 person-month (Click here for other details)

Java interface to DAE - new specification

Description: A very strong trend in the software industry today is to write applications and business objects using Java. This project would create a specification for a Java language binding to the DAE based on the Java Database Connectivity specification (JDBC). In addition, we would develop a sample JDBC driver for the DAE based on the new specification. This would allow software developers to use native Java classes to access a POSC data store through the DAE.

Estimated POSC Staff Resources: 4 person-months (Click here for other details)

Sample CGM files

Description: E&P developers of CGM*PIP metafile generators and renderers need a standard set properly-formatted CGM and CGM*PIP files to test against. This project would check contributed metafiles with commercial syntax checker software and organize sample files on the POSC web site for users to download.

Estimated POSC Staff Resources: 1 person-month (Click here for other details)

Relationship to Collaborative Development Projects

Occasionally, a focused group of members recognizes a special interest and are willing to allocate resources of both people and money to assure that these needs are meet according to their priorities. Those work project that will provide benefit to the membership as a whole and will therefore be incorporated into the specification are referred to by POSC as Collaborative Development Projects (or Category II work). Of course, any of the options documented in Appendix B: Projects Considered are candidates for collaborative development projects. The collaborative development projects with funding identified for at least part of the 1998-1999 business cycle are:

Please see the POSC web site (http://www.posc.org) for more information on these projects, or speak to a staff member.

Appendix A: Synopsis of Immediate, Internal or Ongoing Projects Planned for 1998-1999

Appendix B: Projects Considered but Currently Deferred

Last Revised July 24, 1998. Copyright © 1994-1998 Petrotechnical Open Software Corporation. All rights reserved.
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