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Subject: Re: [emergency-msg] RE: EDXL-HAVE - Conformance Statement


Elysa suggested I provide some thoughts regarding conformance clauses and standards. By way of background, the OGC has had compliance testing for a number of our standards for many years. We have recently upgraded the compliance testing engine (open source) and our members have developed a Compliance Assertion Language (more on this later). We have recently added tests for 6 existing OGC standards and some profiles of those standards, such as GeoRSS GML.
 
Notice we use the word "compliance". We spend weeks arguing whether we should have "conformance" testing or "compliance" testing. Turns out that there are very specific semantics associated with the use of those words in the context of testing a standard or a profile of a standard as to whether it meets the mandatory elements of the given standard. I should also point out that there is a big difference between compliance testing and interoperability testing. Just because an implementation of a standard has tested to be compliant does not guarantee interoperability - it only increases the probability of interoperability.
 
Anyway, we have a "standard" document template for all OGC web service standards. Annex A is a normative section for describing the abstract conformance clauses - what we call the Abstract Test Suite. From that document:
 

In each Implementation Specification document, Annex A shall specify the Abstract Test Suite, as specified in Clause 9 and Annex A of ISO 19105. That Clause and Annex specify the ISO/TC 211 requirements for Abstract Test Suites. Examples of Abstract Test Suites are available in an annex of most ISO 191XX documents. Note that this guidance may be more abstract than needed in an OpenGIS® Implementation Specification.

The actual ISO document (attached) that provides guidance on how to specify an ATS is useful but perhaps more detailed than necessary for use with many interface and encoding standards.

Now, in practical terms what this all means is that when a group is crafting an interface or encoding standard, such as HAVE, one has to be very careful about the proper use of the terms "MUST", "SHALL", etc. Why? Because the ATS (conformance classes) are based on all the mandatory elements of the standard.

Now, why have an ATS? Well, the team in the OGC that builds compliance tests uses the ATS to define the testable assertions that are then documented using the compliance assertion language that our compliance test engine then uses to test any instance of an implementation of that standard. If the implementation being tested passes all of the assertions, which as based on the ATS, then the implementation is deemed compliant.

So, in terms of Alessandro's email, the ATS is by definition abstract. Further, definition of the conformance classes in the ATS is totally application independent. The OGC Compliance Testing capability is accessible from http://www.opengeospatial.org/compliance .

Hope this helps.

Regards

Carl

 

----- Original Message -----

Sent: Friday, September 07, 2007 11:05 AM
Subject: RE: [emergency-msg] RE: EDXL-HAVE - Conformance Statement

With regard to identifying conformance targets, I think the best approach is to identify a minimal set of suitable abstractions for them.  In other words, I think we should not think of a conformance target as being one particular category of real-world users (of which there could be many and hard to distinguish), but more in terms of broad (abstract) roles in the use of the standard.   I don't know if "hospital" is a good conformance target--it **may** be, given that the standard is about hospital availability, and so I have no objections (in principle) to specifying "hospital" as one of the conformance targets.  I just think we should think in abstract terms (perhaps we are doing that already, in which case this email of mine is not saying anything new...).
 
Alessandro
 


From: Elysa Jones [mailto:ejones@warningsystems.com]
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2007 11:18
To: Rex Brooks; Dwarkanath, Sukumar
Cc: Michelle Raymond; emergency-msg@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [emergency-msg] RE: EDXL-HAVE - Conformance Statement

I agree with the approach.  Who is taking the lead? Elysa

At 07:55 AM 9/7/2007, Rex Brooks wrote:
Hi Elysa, Michelle,Sukumar,

Alessandro posted a couple of notes on this, with some urls for WS-I* documents that deal with this.

Given what Mary said, I think we would be well advised to think through this issue in terms of:

1-identifying conformance targets, possibly IMO including hospitals themselves as well as implementations and tools;
2-using the detailed approach Michelle suggested in Tuesday's meeting which focuses in on specific "combinations" of MUST conformance statements with some optional SHOULD statements where to be completely conformant for specific purposes, such as infectious disease, mass casualties or emergency relief specific sets of MUST abd SHOULD statements must be implemented as specified.

I've given it quite a bit of thought and I think Mary is correct. If we don't do this now, we may end up needing to do it later followed by another full 60-Day Review, so it is better to dig into this now and get ti right.

For the EM-Msg SC: We face the same argument for EDXL-RM with different conformance targets and details. I will bring it up in today's meeting, but I don't want to spend a lot of time on it. I just want people to understand that the issue is there, and we need to add it to the face-to-face agenda.

Cheers,
Rex

At 8:29 PM -0500 9/6/07, Elysa Jones wrote:
We discussed it quite a bit.  Liked the idea of something not too detailed and thought we would run it by Mary.  That didn't go well per her note below and as far as I know there has been little discussion since. Elysa

At 08:27 PM 9/6/2007, Dwarkanath, Sukumar wrote:
Was any decision made re this, or did you get a chance to discuss this?
 
Thanks
 
Sukumar
 
 

From: Mary McRae [ mailto:marypmcrae@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Mary McRae
Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2007 2:01 PM
To: 'Elysa Jones'
Cc: Dwarkanath, Sukumar; 'Rex Brooks'; 'Michelle Raymond'
Subject: RE: EDXL-HAVE - Conformance Statement
 
While it probably meets the “letter of the law”, I’m not quite sure what “supports” really means and how someone would be able to determine whether or not their application truly conforms. I remember an earlier concern around CAP – someone stating that they implemented/were using CAP but they didn’t allow for one or more of the optional elements. The TC felt strongly that the implementation should not be able to say that it conformed to CAP. You want to make sure that the conformance statement covers exactly what it means to say your application conforms to the EDXL-HAVE specification, including specific references to other specifications and their versions as appropriate. I saw a mention of doing something really simple this time around and then working on it later, but that will then force another public review round. As always, I urge the TC to take the time to “get it right” now.
 
Of course the decision is up to the TC; as long as the conformance section meets the basic requirement I have no reason to hold it back.
 
All the best,
 
Mary
 
 
From: Elysa Jones [ mailto:ejones@warningsystems.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2007 12:46 PM
To: Mary McRae
Cc: Dwarkanath, Sukumar; Rex Brooks; Michelle Raymond
Subject: EDXL-HAVE - Conformance Statement
 
Can you tell us if the following is sufficient for EDXL-HAVE conformance section?  Elysa



 

4.   CONFORMANCE




 
An implementation is a conforming EDXL-HAVE if the implementation meets the conditions in Section 4.1.
 

4.1            CONFORMANCE AS EDXL-HAVE




 

1.         Supports the use of EDXL-DE, or a similar distribution element

2.
        Supports the syntax and semantics in the Data Dictionary (Sec 3.2)

3.
        Supports the defined EDXL-HAVE schema (attached artifact)
 
 
 
 
 
 
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-- 
Rex Brooks
President, CEO
Starbourne Communications Design
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison
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Tel: 510-898-0670

211n419 Guide for Defining Abstract Test Suites.pdf



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