Minutes from the May 2nd RETS monthly status call

Date:

May 2, 2007, 10:00 PDT

Recorder

Paul Stusiak

Attending

Paul Stusiak, Falcon Technologies
Gina Accawi, Falcon Technologies
Chris McKeever, CRT
Andrew Tillman, CRT
Dan Woolley, eNeighborhoods
Matt Lavallee, PMP Technologies
Shawn Meissner, Move, Inc.
Sergio Del Rio, T4Bi
Jaison Freed, FBS Datasystems

Minutes

• The RETS schema were the focus of work last month. The engineering changes were presented and accepted as being an appropriate change. In schema terms, the change was from a Russian Doll to a Venetian Blind design pattern.
• Additional pattern matching validation constraints on certain elements were discussed. There was no consensus on this, however it was not rejected. The current constraints will be removed from the schema.
• We held an in-person meeting in Austin.
• There is a lot of traffic on the rets-dev list right now.
• The focus of work in May will be on schema again. While there is a lot of concern and discussion on typing of elements, the focus will be on getting some agreement on the names of elements and documenting their intent.
• There is an in-person meeting in Rockville, MD scheduled for the 17th to discuss schema.
• There are two groups meeting on Thursday conference calls - Update and RETS 1.7 Technical review. These are closed groups. They are chaired by Sergio Del Rio (Update) and Stuart Schuessler (Technical Review).
• Next status call is June 6th.
• An in-person meeting is scheduled for the 19th and 20th of June in Thousand Oaks, CA.
• Other business: Matt made a request for some additional documentation to assist in understanding of the relationship between several of the schemas, Listings, Properties and ListingProperties.
• Other business: A discussion of baths occurred. Both Dan and Shawn commented on the many different representations of baths that they see at different MLS sites. Matt looked up some form of plumbing standard on reference.com - it generated some laughter since the group was in agreement that it would be nice if there was some universal definition, but the existing practices and data made it unlikely that there would be a standard definition. No conclusion was reached other than the probable outcome would be to make this a string with local definition.
• Other business: Matt made a comment about standardizing the naming and used the case of TotalBaths and RoomsTotal. Paul stated that he had been working on a similar change with Date that had just been completed. In that case, the pattern was XXXDateTime. Paul suggested that the pattern for the case be BathsTotal. This change will be made in the schema.

The call adjourned.