Technical Architecture Group (TAG)

W3C has created the TAG to document and build consensus around principles of Web architecture and to interpret and clarify these principles when necessary, to resolve issues involving general Web architecture brought to the TAG, and to help coordinate cross-technology architecture developments inside and outside W3C. -- TAG charter

Events/Schedule

Next meeting: 12 August teleconference. The TAG has a distributed meeting: Mondays, 3:00pm Boston time, for 90 minutes. The agenda is due to TAG by 10:30ET the Friday before. Minute are due to www-tag within a day or two after.

Recent events: 29 July summary, 22 July summary, (more)

Upcoming events:

• 24-25 Sep face-to-face (in person) in Vancouver.
• 18 Nov: ftf during W3C AC Intro day (Proposed at 12 Feb ftf meeting). Regrets: RF.
• 3 - 7 March 2003: Technical Plenary, Boston
• See also: W3C Events Calendar · Holidays and Festivals

Deliverables

• Issues list. See the TAG issue tracking policy (and tips for getting the TAG's attention).
• TAG Findings
• Draft: Architectural Principles of the World Wide Web
• Categorization of architectural points

Participation and Policies

Tim Berners-Lee (W3C) is the Chair of the TAG. The following eight people were elected by the W3C Membership or appointed by the Director to the TAG:

• Tim Bray (Antarcti.ca)¹
• Dan Connolly (W3C)²
• Paul Cotton (Microsoft)¹
• Roy Fielding (Day Software)²
• Chris Lilley (W3C)¹
• David Orchard (BEA Systems)²
• Norm Walsh (Sun)¹
• Stuart Williams (Hewlett-Packard)¹. At the 5 May 2002 TAG face-to-face meeting, the TAG resolved that Stuart should co-Chair the TAG.

Notes:

• ¹ One-year term began 11 Dec 2001 (see election announcement). Refer to announcement of short terms (Member-only).
• ² Two-year term began 11 Dec 2001 (see election announcement).

Mailing list policy for www-tag

• For public discussions of architectural issues, please use www-tag@w3.org (archive). Please read the tips for getting the TAG's attention below.
• To subscribe www-tag, send mail to www-tag-request with "Subject: subscribe".
• To unsubscribe from this list, send a mail to www-tag-request with "Subject: unsubscribe".
• More about W3C mailing lists.

Please note the following policy regarding the use of www-tag:

• Read privileges: This list is public. Anyone may read the archives.
• Write privileges: Anyone may write to this list. This is the TAG's mailing list for work, so please limit discussions to issues relevant to Web Architecture.
• Persistence: W3C will do its best to ensure that the archive of this mailing list does not change. W3C will only remove a mail to this list in extreme circumstances.

Tips for getting the TAG's attention

The TAG encourages public discussion of architecture issues on the archived www-tag list. However, due to the sheer volume of email received, the TAG cannot guarantee that every issue raised on the list will be addressed.

The TAG does commit to the following (per 28 Jan 2002 teleconference):

• The TAG will respond to each request brought to it by a W3C Working Group.
• The TAG should respond to each request brought to it by an external organization.

Therefore, before you post to www-tag, you should consider the following alternatives:

• Is there another group within W3C that is more suited to address this issue? Check out the list of W3C mailing lists and list of W3C Activities.
• General discussion about the Web should take place on www-talk@w3.org.

What can you do to improve your chances that the TAG will put an issue on their meeting agenda?

• First, review the mailing list and issues list to see whether your issue has already been addressed by the TAG.
• If the TAG has already put an issue on its issues list, and your comment is related to that issue, please include the issue identifier (e.g., w3cMediaType-1) in the subject line of your email. This will also help us track issues.
• Please do not send broad requests for review of documents. Instead, the TAG is much more likely to consider specific issues than general requests. The TAG is very interested when two groups disagree about an architectural principle.
• Rather than cross-post a message to several groups including the TAG, please just give the TAG a heads-up with the relevant pointers to the discussion forum where a topic is being discussed (e.g., another Working Group's mailing list archive).
• Include a proposal in your email. A rule of thumb from Dan Connolly: "If a thread goes back and forth three times without anybody suggesting textual changes to the document, something's wrong." (see Dan Connolly's message).

Group policies

• Contributor policies
• Patent disclosures

TAG internal page (Member only)

About the TAG: Charter, History

The TAG charter was added to W3C process July 2001. The events below lead up to the creation of this group, and chart our progress:

July 2002

29 July summary, 22 July summary, 15 July summary, 8 July summary, Summary 9 June to 2 July, 1 July summary

June 2002

24 June summary, 17 June summary, 10 June summary, 3 June summary

May 2002

27 May summary, 20 May summary, Summary of TAG activity since 4 Apr 2002, 5 May ftf minutes

Apr 2002

29 Apr summary, 22 Apr summary, 15 Apr summary, 8 Apr summary, Summary of TAG activity in Mar 2002, 1 Apr summary

Mar 2002

25 Mar summary, 18 Mar summary, summary of TAG activity in Jan/Feb 2002, 11 Mar summary, 4 Mar IRC log

Feb 2002

4 Feb, 18 Feb, 25 Feb irc log

12 Feb 2002

1st first face-to-face meeting, with some people in Cambridge (MA) and others in Redmond (WA). IRC log

Jan 2002

meeting summaries: 7 Jan, 14 Jan, 21 Jan, 28 Jan

11 Dec 2001

News Release: World Wide Web Consortium Forms Technical Architecture Group

19 Jul 2001

TAG charter and 19 July 2001 Process Document published.

also:

• news from 2001
• news from 2002

Background References

The following is suggest background reading:

• Design Issues
• From Roy Fielding's dissertation Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures
• XML in 10 points
• What is a good standard?
• Common User Agent Problems
• WAI Accessibility Guidelines

Copyright© 2001 W3C^® (MIT, INRIA, Keio), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability, trademark, document use and software licensing rules apply.