Tool Last Updated on March 13, 2009 5PM EST
IMPORTANT NOTICE
- Available for evaluation and feedback purposes ONLY.
- NOT the authoritative source for NIEM conformance, and therefore, CANNOT guarantee or be used to certify full NIEM conformance.
- Intended to ASSIST developers by automatically identifying potential locations of non-conformance within IEPD artifacts (e.g., schemas, metadata, catalog, xml, etc.) using the latest published NIEM specifications.
The National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) Program Management Office (PMO) announces the public release of the NIEM Conformance Tool intended to assist developers by automatically identifying potential locations of non-conformance within IEPD artifacts (including schemas, metadata, catalogs, and XML). The tool uses the latest published NIEM Naming and Design Rules (NDR) 1.3 and associated IEPD specifications. It is currently available for evaluation and feedback, and does NOT guarantee or certify full NIEM conformance. Therefore, it should NOT be considered an authoritative source for NIEM conformance.
NIEM schema developers can upload an IEPD, a set of schemas in a zip file, or an individual schema and receive a report identifying any NIEM NDR rules that have been violated. The uploaded files and the report are stored online in a user-created account workspace and can be deleted at any time.
The NIEM Conformance Tool is a dynamic work-in-progress and will remain so in the near future. It will improve weekly as new auto-check rules are added, and as user feedback and policy changes are addressed through refinements of its user interface and capabilities. The current tool automatically checks 107 out of about 193 NDR rules and sub-rules*. Release of the NIEM Conformance Tool now, before its completion, assumes that partial automatic conformance validation is preferred to a completely manual interpretation and application of the NIEM NDR. The NIEM PMO believes that the tool can provide incremental value to the community while, at the same time, allowing valuable feedback to guide further tool improvements and progress.
For a given IEPD or schema set, NDR rules that auto-pass, auto-fail, or that require manual review are clearly labeled in the resulting spreadsheet validation report. The user is responsible for interpretation of the NIEM NDR and for performing the remaining manual checks. As auto rules are added, fewer manual checks will be necessary. Nonetheless, rule dependencies can result in rule failures in schemas and IEPDs that passed earlier validation runs. Therefore, to keep pace with tool changes, users are advised to read and follow the instructions in the tool carefully. Furthermore, users should understand that no software program will ever automatically validate all rules in the NIEM NDR. For example, the tool cannot auto-check subjective rules such as the validity of component definitions and semantics.
The NIEM Conformance Tool also checks some of the requirements that are listed in the Requirements for a NIEM IEPD Specification document. The document identifies baseline business requirements for IEPDs and outlines artifacts and metadata that should be included to satisfy those requirements. The tool will review the metadata.xml and catalog.html files of an IEPD, and report whether or not these baseline requirements have been satisfied.
A number of user interface enhancements and capabilities are already planned for the next several months, including:
- Indicate line number of non-UTF-8 characters, preferably before validation is allowed.
- Automatically fix a few non-UTF-8 character errors, such as smart quotes.
- Put the date the Conformance Tool was last updated into the output report.
- In a user's "My Validations" section, flag output reports that are out of date.
- Handle XML DOCTYPE declarations.
- Allow users to run conformance checks for IEPDs already stored in a user's workspace (integration of Conformance Tool with the IEPD Tool).
- Attempt to provide some warnings of areas of non-conformance for some of the manual rules.
The NIEM Conformance Tool is available from the "tools" menu item at http://niem.gov. Feedback, suggestions, and suspected bugs/errors are welcome and encouraged from the user community; these should be submitted to the NIEM Helpdesk.
Total Rules and Sub-Rules* in Conformance Tool: 193
The tool checks some of the rules that are in the NIEM Naming and Design Rules(NDR) document. Rules state specific requirements on artifacts, such as schemas and instances. Most rules apply to conformant schemas while others apply to instances.
Not all of the rules in the NDR are automatically checked. As the tool is further developed the total number of NDR rules that are automatically checked will increase. We're adding to these rules continuously and will keep an update of that information here for your reference.
A report will be provided that contains a list of rules that were automatically checked, the rules that passed, the rules that failed, the location of the failures in your schema files (i.e., line numbers, XML component names), and will also contain a list of all the rules that were not automatically checked. For the non-automatic rules, the report also contains a mechanism for you to keep track of all the rules that you have manually checked.
Schematron is the language that is used to automatically check the NDR rules. Schematron is a language for making assertions about patterns found in XML documents. In other words, Schematron is used to ensure that your schemas are conformant with as many of the NIEM NDR rules as possible. The Schematron file below has all the rules that are automatically checked by this tool. You do not need to download or interpret this file, it is simply listed here for your reference.
This XML schema is used to test each NDR rule that is currently automatically checked. This file includes snippets of XML schema that are intended to make each NDR rule fail in the NIEM Conformance Tool. This file is provided for informational purposes only. You do not need to download or interpret this file, it is simply listed here for your reference.
This tool checks some of the requirements that are listed in the Requirements for a NIEM IEPD Specification document. The document identifies baseline business requirements for IEPDs and outlines artifacts and metadata that should be included to satisfy the business requirements. The tool validates that these baseline requirements are included in the metadata.xml and catalog.html files of an IEPD.
A report will be provided that indicates the state of your metadata and your catalog files. The report will show all metadata that was submitted and whether or not all metadata has been completed. Likewise, the report will contain all included artifacts and whether or not all required artifacts have been included.
*This number includes both rules and sub-rules that are in the Conformance Tool. Sub-rules are used to check a portion of an NDR rule. Sub-rules are not defined in the NDR, only in the Conformance Tool. Sub-rules are necessary because some NDR rule are better verified in parts.