Guidelines to Writing Conformance Clauses and SOA-RAF ConformanceClausesSpreadsheet

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

Hi Folks,

I uploaded an Excel Spreadsheet of phrases that contain the word "MUST" 
in some form, minus a few obviously non-applicable phrases. Some of 
these appear to be genuinely intended as Conformance Clauses, though 
most are not. However, even some of those which are not, could be, so I 
included them. I didn't also include SHALL, SHALL NOT, MUST NOT as 
search strings. I did include some MAYs and SHOULDs even though they 
were not capitalized and did not appear to be intended as Conformance 
Clauses. These MAYs and SHOULDs occurred close enough to the MUSTs, that 
it seemed wiser to include them.

This is NOT MY list of candidate Conformance Clauses, nor is it either 
comprehensive or exhaustive. I left out the most obvious non applicable 
items: definitions, examples and obviously explanatory material. 
However, if I thought that someone, particularly the literal-minded out 
there in our audience, could turn something into the question "Is this 
required?" I included it even if I didn't think it should be included. I 
didn't want to be the filter here. I just don't want us to spend time on 
finding the phrases that MIGHT be thought to be conformance statements.

I looked at the Architectural Implications, and outside of the ones 
included, they did not appear to be useful for the purpose of turning 
into a conformance section by saying something like: "Solution 
Architectures based on this Reference Architecture Foundation MUST 
follow the guidelines outlined in the Architectural Implications Sections.

I did include all Section numbers and indicated the Conformance 
Statements that I thought were intended to be such and could be used for 
Conformance Clauses with a Yes in the "Is this intended to be a 
conformance statement? column.

I also uploaded a Word doc that I created by copying and pasting the web 
page on Guidelines for Writing Conformance Clauses 
http://docs.oasis-open.org/templates/TCHandbook/ConformanceGuidelines.html

Sometimes having a document is easier to find and reference than a 
website. I think we should all review what the OASIS staff have provided 
for us with regard to Conformance Guidelines since our Reference 
Architecture Framework does not make the inclusion of a Conformance 
Section easy. I provide this to let you all read the material for 
yourselves.


Cheers,
Rex

-- 
Rex Brooks
President, CEO
Starbourne Communications Design
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison
Berkeley, CA 94702
Tel: 510-898-0670