[conformance] minutes from the Dec 13 Meeting

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

Minutes from the December 13, 2001 OASIS Conformance TC
F2F and Teleconference
meeting
Submitted by Lynne Rosenthal


Attendees:
Mark Skall
(skall@nist.gov)
Chair
Lynne Rosenthal
(lynne.rosenthal@nist.gov)
Scribe
Lofton Henderson
(lofton@rockynet.com
Sandra Martinez
(sandra.martinez@nist.gov)
Ken Holman
(gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com)
chair, XSLT Conformance TC
Lisa Carnahan
(lisa.carnahan@nist.gov)
representing ebXML Registry TC

Via telephone
Aidan Shackleton (aidan.shackleton@cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk)
David Smiley (dsmiley@mercator.com)
David Marston
(David_Marston@lotus.com)
representing XSLT Conformance TC
Rik Drummond (rik@drummondgroup.com)
David Fischer (david@drummondgroup.com)

Future Meetings:

·       

Teleconf:  February 15, 2002 at 10:00a.m. (EST)

Tentatively March 15, 2002 at 10:00 (EST)

Action Items for Conformance Document

·       

Aidan
and Lynne  definition of accreditation

·       

Mark 
check consistency of terminology (e.g., shall not must)

·       

Lisa 
example from ebXML Registry and POSIX

·       

Aiden 
use of “implementation” in profiles/levels.

·       

Mark 
another term for “levels” in conformance levels

·       

David
M  XSLT examples

·       

Mark
and Lynne  definition of  “strict conformance” and clarify
section

·       

Lynne 
add informative references from online resources, including 
glossary

·       

Aidan 
send Lynne suggestions for contents of a conformance clause.

·       

Aidan
- draft conformance responsibilities and maintaining conformance

·       

Lynne 
revise document and informal review prior to TC and TC Chair review

1.

      

Housekeeping
Welcome to all participating in F2F and on the telephone. 
A quorum of voting members was present.  (Lofton, Lynne, Mark, David
S)
New voting members:  Rik Drummond and Aidan Shackleton 
congratulations and welcome
Approval of previous minutes (Sept 13 teleconf)
Review and approval of the Agenda

2.

      

Overview
of TC
Mark gave an overview of the TC’s mission, objective, scope, and
deliverables. See
TC
charter. 
Although the TC welcomes all to participate, only voting members have an
official vote. Current deliverables include the Conformance document and
a Test and Certification document, which is on a backburner. 

3.

      

Liaison
Report
a)

      

W3C
Quality Assurance Activity
The W3C QA Activity
held its first meeting last month (November).  Many of the
objectives are the same as our TC’s.  The Conformance Requirements
document was input to the QA.  The goal is to progress a document
that is consistent in both communities. 
b)

      

Security
Services TC had asked our TC to provide guidance and review their
conformance documents for the SAML specification.  Mark and Lynne
provided guidance last summer and continue to review and provide comments
on the SAML conformance documents. 
c)

      

IIC. 
Lynne stated that the IIC mail archive shows that the Conformance
Requirements document has been used by the IIC in justifying the
development of a conformance clause for the MS specification.  David
S., Rik and David F. provided a status report of the IIC conformance
work.  Basically, the ebXML MS TC didn’t think they needed a
conformance clause; the IIC did and desired a clause that identified
profiles.  A compromise resulted  the MS spec will contain a
brief conformance clause and the IIC can provide additional profile
statements. 
d)

      

XSLT
Conformance TC.   Ken provided an overview and status of the
conformance work within the TC.   The TC is developing a
conformance test suite and is in the process of collecting and cataloging
tests.  The objective is to receive and create test materials that
are machine processable. Test assertions were derived from the XSLT
specification.  It would be nice if W3C specs were XML documents so
that assertions could be automatically pulled out and to enable
traceablity.  Additionally, XSLT has many discretionary items. 
The TC is developing a configuration utility to configure the appropriate
set of tests according to the developer’s discretionary items.  The
goal is to not have users decide if a test fails due to failing the test
or due to the discretionary choice of the developer. When a specification
has lots of discretionary items, it is difficult for those not writing
the spec to guess what the spec developers really wanted.  However,
the advantage is that there are no biases as to what was meant. 

4.

      

Conformance
Requirements Guideline.
The rest of the meeting was dedicated to reviewing the document section
by section. 

Progression of document: Revise after this meeting.  After informal
review by TC members, send document to OASIS TC chairs and any other
interested parties, requesting their review and comment  30 day
review period.  Revise document, review and vote to make document a
Committee Specification  tentatively planned for March 2002

Discussion and changes included:
Title changed to: Conformance Requirements for Specifications. 
Examples not restricted to OASIS examples only.  Examples needed.
Conformance to this document (sect 3) shall conform to this document.
Look into addressing what is conformance to non-functional
specifications
See Action Items for additional items. 

5.

      

Next
Teleconference scheduled for Feb. 15, 2002 at 10:00am (eastern). 

Meeting Adjourned at 11:15am