Desktop Agent Bridging Discussion group 23 October 2024

[robmoffat]

Group overview

Discussion group devoted to 'bridging' between FDC3 implementations (aka Desktop Agents), allowing applications running on one Desktop Agent to integrate with FDC3 applications running on additional Desktop Agents and devices for the same user.

Desktop Agent Bridging was added to FDC3 in the 2.1 release as an @experimental 5th-Part to the Standard. The group is now dedicated to the discussion of implementations, Q&A on the protocol, and working to improve the protocol further.

Relevant issue tags

Issues that relate to Desktop Agent Bridging bear the label:

Meeting Date

Thursday 23 Oct 2024 - 9am (US eastern timezone EDT) / 2pm (London, BST)

Zoom info

• Join Zoom Meeting
• Meeting ID: 969 4029 4948
• Passcode: 636931
• Dial-in:

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Meeting notices

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• A Discussion Group has no direct decision-making power regarding the FDC3 standard - rather it is intended that anything they propose or work on will result in proposals (via Github issues and PRs) for the Standards Working Group participants to consider and vote on for inclusion in the standard.

Participation Requirements

Note: Meeting participants are expected to accept the terms of the FDC3 license (Community Specification License), understand the governance process and have a CLA in place.

Please click the following links at the start of the meeting if you have not done so previously.

• View the CSL
• View the GOVERNANCE of the Project
• Click here to start a PR.
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• Click here to send email to become a voting participant on the FDC3 Project

Tracking Attendance

Note: Meeting participants are expected to add a comment to this GitHub issue in order that we can track attendance of FDC3 project meetings. Please do this at the start of the meeting.

Agenda

• Convene & roll call, review meeting notices (5mins)
• Review action items from previous meeting (5mins)
• Contribution of tests for a DAB
• Future plans for Bridging and Backplane
• AOB & Adjourn (5mins)

Minutes

• John Ghidu gave a brief intro to the Jest-based tests for a Desktop Agent Bridge that interop.io can contribute
  • Includes a mock for a Desktop Agent
  • Accepts a couple of code snippets for starting your bridge implementation and initiating a connection to it
  • Sets up two Desktop Agent connections to the bridge and runs through test cases to show the birdge conforms to the standard
  • Does NOT test a Desktop Agent's use of a bridge
  • Has been contributed to a FINOS labs repository.
    • Needs docs/example adding to show how you to set-up a bridge to be tested.
    • We are lacking an open source implementation of bridge to test against.
  • @watson-ew with many firms implementing Desktop Agents, bridging is becoming more important (otherwise you end up with islands of interop in those DA) - but there is a big gap without a OS (or commercial) implementation of a bridge.
  • @robmoffat can the FDC3 for the Web protocol replace bridging? They overlap a lot.
    • @kriswest They do share a lot of payloads, but are designed for different purposes and it would be difficult to use the Web proxy interface to connect Desktop Agents - particular around intent resolution,
    • @robmoffat What about using FDC3 for the Web for connecting other technologies?
    • @kriswest We'd need an alternative to the 'Web Connection Protocol', say a 'Websocket connection protocol' then you could use the 'Desktop Agent Communication protocol' for all the messages - one websocket could support multiple other languages.
  • There was further discussion about Desktop Agents containing other Desktop Agents, alternative or recursive hierarchies etc. (current hierarchy for bridging is App -> Desktop Agent -> Bridge) - there was consensus that they would introduce more complexity and would not be advantageous
• Resolved to arrange a future meeting where we invite key stakeholders and/or developers for firms known to be implementing Desktop Agents and to discuss the future of Bridging
  • A reference implementation of a bridge is needed
  • Bridging needs more work on authentication to enable bridges to be hosted on the web instead of locally
  • Conformance tests for a bridge are needed (interop.io contribution above does this)
  • Conformance tests for a Desktop Agent talking to a bridge (interop.io work above doesn't do this but could be extended to - e.g. a real DA talking to a conformant bridge and through it a mock of another Desktop Agent)

Action Items

• @kriswest & @robmoffat to discuss arranging a future bridging meeting with DA implementors (stakeholders at firms) to explain what it does for them and to discuss what is needed to make bridging a reality in production.

Untracked attendees

Full name	Affiliation	GitHub username

[robmoffat]

Rob Moffat / FINOS 💠

[kriswest]

Kris West / interop.io 🚀

[watson-ew]

Chris Watson / Elgin White 👋

[john-ciq]

John Ghidiu / interop.io