TAXII Conformance - proposed language

["Davidson II, Mark S" <mdavidson@mitre.org>]

All,

 

As Bret and I work toward converting TAXII into a set of OASIS documents, we came across the OASIS requirement for a conformance section, which TAXII 1.1 does not have. One example of an OASIS conformance section is the Universal Business Language (UBL) specification [1].

 

TAXII 1.1 does not have a conformance section, and instead relies on RFC 2119 normative statements (e.g., statements containing MUST/SHOULD/MAY) throughout the document. The OASIS conformance section seems to be a mechanism for wrapping the many Normative Statements in a specification into a condensed set of higher level statements/requirements.

 

Bret and I have drafted a proposal for the conformance section of the TAXII Services Specification. The goal of the proposed text is to meet the OASIS requirement for a conformance section without altering the requirements for TAXII. This text is not intended to add, modify, or remove any requirements from TAXII 1.1. If you feel this text might not meet that criteria, please speak up.

 

Without further preamble, here is the proposed text. Your feedback is welcome.

 

Conformance

Implementations have discretion over which parts of TAXII they implement (e.g., Discovery Service).

 

Conformant implementations must conform to all Normative Statements that apply to the portions of TAXII they implement (e.g., Implementers of the Discovery Service must conform to all Normative Statements regarding the Discovery Service).

 

Conformant implementations are free to ignore Normative Statements that do not apply to the portions of TAXII they implement (e.g., Non-implementers of the Discovery Service are free to ignore all Normative Statements regarding the Discovery Service).

 

The conformance section of this document is intentionally broad and attempts to reiterate what already exists in this document. The TAXII 1.1 Specifications, which this specification is based on, did not have a conformance section. Instead, the TAXII 1.1 Specifications relied on normative statements. TAXII 1.1.1 represents a minimal change from TAXII 1.1, and in that spirit no requirements have been added, modified, or removed by this section.

 

 

Thank you.

Mark and Bret

 

[1] http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/os-UBL-2.1/UBL-2.1.html#S-CONFORMANCE