Conformance TC new Charter

[Lynne Rosenthal <lynne.rosenthal@nist.gov>]

To OASIS Conformance TC Members

The OASIS Conformance Technical Committee has approved the revision to
the Charter for the TC and a change to the TC name.  The new Charter
and name change reflect a more focused scope.  Below is the
Charter.  It will also be posted on the TC's webpage.


Name of the TC: 
OASIS Conformance Technical Committee (TC)

Statement of Purpose

The OASIS Conformance TC defines and develops conformance
requirements, guidelines, white papers, and methodologies to enable the
development of testable specifications and conforming
implementations.  Further, the Conformance TC provides conformance
guidance to OASIS TCs, membership, and the public in the form of
assistance and liaisons with external forums. 

The TC serves as a central source of information about conformance and
conformance related topics.  It provides ‘corporate knowledge’ of
past conformance efforts as well as provides guidance and assistance to
ongoing conformance efforts. The TC fosters communication and
collaboration among those developing specifications, conformance test
suites and conformance testing programs.  

The TC will cooperate closely with other OASIS TCs, W3C, and ebXML WGs of
UN/CEFACT.  It is important that we, as a community, leverage
current and future efforts in developing conformance test suites, as well
as promoting efforts to ensure clear, unambiguous, testable
specifications that can be implemented in a consistent and correct
manner. 

As part of its efforts the Conformance TC will:

·       

Address
conformance requirements for ebXML and OASIS specifications

·       

Develop
guidelines for building conformance test suites and criteria for
accepting them from outside organizations

·       

Provide
conformance resources consisting of such items as documents,
presentations, and pointers to conformance test suites and tools

·       

Coordinate
TC activities with other technical committees and working groups
operating within OASIS and ebXML WGs of UN/CEFACT

·       

Provide
conformance expertise to other OASIS technical committee as
requested

·       

Proactively
engage with related activities in external forums, such as W3C Quality
Assurance (QA) Activity 

Technical Committee Deliverables:

The initial deliverable is a conformance requirement document for
OASIS specifications as well as one for ebXML specifications. The ebXML
conformance requirement document will be a special case of the OASIS
document.  The base documents will be the ebXML specifications and
the documents listed on the TCs web page. Participation from other OASIS
committees will be solicited and all documents will be coordinated with
the relevant committees. 

Additional deliverables include:

·       

guideline
for developing and/or submitting conformance test suites

·       

guideline
for developing a conformance testing program

·       

online
conformance resource and reference to documents, presentations, FAQs,
etc. related to conformance and conformance related topics.