Re: SSTC/Focus 12 June 2001 telecon - Conformance Group Status

["Eve L. Maler" <eve.maler@east.sun.com>]

I am very wary of "certifying" SAML implementations.  Certification goes a 
way past conformance testing or even interoperability testing, into the 
realm of legal liability.  For now, I think the development of test suites 
would be a huge win, without the legal risk or cost of certification.

         Eve

At 07:55 PM 6/11/01 -0700, Krishna Sankar wrote:
>Hi,
>
>         Here is a very preliminary cut at the conformance clause. Would 
> like to get
>a sanity check feedback.
>
>         I really think the conformance clause and the conformance 
> nomenclature
>should be very simple as the readers of those would be business and other
>non-technical users. So the clause would not have the dazzle of the other
>sections :-(
>
>         In addition to the conformance clause (which would be part of the
>specification) we would have a SAML conformance program document and
>possibly a SAML certification document. Bob Griffin is working on both -
>Bob, please feel free to add your comments on the state of those docs.
>
>         Due to legal responsibilities, the certification is an issue. 
>  From our con
>calls and my (e-mail) talks with Karl, we could provide conformance
>guidelines, develop documents describing the tests and even write test code.
>But we might not be able to do the actual certification. A related issue is
>the interoperability - conformance even though necessary, is not a
>sufficient condition for interoperability. Naturally these issues would be
>dealt with in the (separate) conformance program document while keeping the
>conformance clause (in the specification) as simple as possible.
>
>         I would like to get ideas, comments, wisdom, ... on these issues.
>
>         cheers

--
Eve Maler                                             +1 781 442 3190
Sun Microsystems XML Technology Development  eve.maler @ east.sun.com