ICAR Animal Data Exchange Working Group – Technical meeting 23 September 2021

• In attendance: Andreas S, Andrew C, Anton H, Arjan L, Craig V, Erwin S, Peter B, Thomas P

Agenda:

The focus now is:

• what we want to incorporate in version 1.3 including the pull requests on progeny details
• the discussion around the OpenAPI spec 3.1 and nullable types
• conformation scores API

1. Pull request: Changes for parturition event with new progeny details (#243)

Anton has addressed everything we discussed at our last meeting. We agreed to finish reviewing and to merge the pull request.

2. Nullable declaration is not working correctly for reference types (#214)

We are looking for consistent use of both nullable true and the "all of" or "any of" syntax. We should move to the proper 3.0 syntax. We don't need an intermediate release for this because it should be backwards compatible. We can tag it along with the next release.

It was proposed that we should make it clear that we have some issues with some code generators. The recommended generators should work in the best way possible with the existing declarations.

We need to go through all of the current files and make sure they are compatible. This should be done promptly so it can be included in the next minor release.
Anton has volunteered to do some of this but would welcome assistance. Andrew is willing to help.

3. Consider moving to open api spec 3.1 (#239)

We need to check whether the generators support 3.1. We noted that the open-api generator does not support it. This is because it is dependent on swagger-parser which does not support 3.1. We should include a link to this in our ticket.

OpenAPI 3.1 is intended to address some issues that break with JSON Schema.

We agreed there was no urgency to move to 3.1 right now. We will keep the issue open and review the status of the generators.

We could list the tools and languages we guarantee as working with the standard.

Find out which toolsets are being commonly used by emailing the working group members but also use the Animal Data Exchange Group to reach other ICAR members.
Andrew will put it on the agenda for the ADE Group meeting on 7 October.

4. Composite Conformation Scores

Erwin raised the issue of specifiying composite conformation scores.

The conformation trait types are specified in the file icarConformationTraitType.json in the enums folder.

Composite scores are calculated from the linear traits but may be adjusted by the observer. The conformation score event was designed originally for the individual linear scores.

To handle composite scores you could create an event with an array of linear conformation traits and an array of composite traits. Erwin create an issue for it and then start designing it.

5. Dealing with stale issues

There are some issues where there has been no activity for quite a long time. The suggestion was made that we should close them if there is no activity and nobody else is interested. It can be done automatically by a GitHub bot that marks items as stale after a period of inactivity.
Arjan will create an issue for considering a bot.

Issue feedIntake in milkVisitEvent 171 has been around for a long time and could possibly be closed.

We agreed to close issue Capabilities API 156.

Suggestions:

• create projects in GitHub so we can see the progression of work, such as for each release.
• make someone responsible for an issue so that person makes sure there is progress on the issue.

6. Circulation of a release document for the release of version 1.2

• To the wider ADE Working Group
• To the ICAR employee co-ordinating the working groups, René. He will distribute it to all of the ICAR members
• Encouraged everyone to post or share it in relevant places such as an industry document

Next meeting scheduled for 7 October 2021 at 8:15am CET