Federal XML Naming and Design Rules and Guidance: Potential Next Steps

1
Federal XML Naming and Design Rules and Guidance
Potential Next Steps

• Ken Sall, SAIC
• XML Community of Practice
• Presented at NIST
• March 15, 2006

2
Agenda

• Status Recent Events and Work Remaining
• Current NDRG Outline
• Code Examples
• Comments Yet to be Addressed
• Significant Assumptions
• Potential Ways Forward
• Strawman XML Schema for NDRG Rules Summary
• Open Discussion

3
NDRG Status Recent Events

• Jan. 14 Sections 1-3 posted.
• Feb. 8 LMIs responses posted to Mr. Salls
  comments regarding 14 Jan. draft (in the form of
  modified Sections 1-3)
• Feb. 10 Example XML Schemas and Instances posted
  to CORE.gov.   
• Feb. 21 Commenter call covering Sec. 1-3.  
• Feb. 22 Sections 4-7 posted.
• Mar. 6 Cease Work Instruction issued by GSA/OPG.
• Mar. 7 Consolidate Comments and Responses to
  Sec. 4-7 posted very few responses to our
  comments.
• Sec. 4-7 Commenter call scheduled for Mar. 8
  cancelled.
• Aside UN/CEFACT approved their NDR version 2.0
  on 7 March 2006.

4
NDRG Status (cont.) Work Remaining

• Numerous comments yet to be addressed, esp. Sec.
  4-7.
• Which version of Sec. 1-3 to use?
• Code List Section 6 need lots of work.
• Generate Table of Contents
• Appendix A Federal XML Naming and Design Rules
  and Guidelines Checklist see XSD strawman on
  later slides
• App. B Approved Acronyms and Abbreviations -
  governance
• App. C Metadata Components redundant
• App. D Approved Representation Terms -
  governance
• Appendix E Technical Terminology non-XSD terms
  
• Code Examples (see later slides)
• Maintaining CORE.gov site?
• Contact Robin Cover to update his NDRG section.

5
Current NDRG Outline as of March 6, 2006

• Introduction (13 pages)
• Purpose
• Scope
• Assumptions
• Audience
• General XML Constructs (42 pages)
• Developing Data Element Dictionary Content (12
  pages)
• Developing XML Content (35 pages)
• Extending and Restricting Types (2 pages)
• Code Lists and Identifier Lists (4 pages) very
  weak yet very important
• XML Instances (2 pages)
• Total Page Count (without front and back matter)
  105 pages

6
20 Rule Categories (Table 1-1)
Are all categories still used?
7
Code Examples from 10 Feb.
8
Code Examples Work Remaining

• A README.html would be a good idea, perhaps with
  a link to each file, describing its purpose or
  role.
• A diagram that shows the interrelationships among
  these files would be helpful. For example, what
  are the dependencies? among ISO, IANA, UNECE,
  Federal, DLA
• The XML instances were generated so they have
  dummy data. Greater semantic value would be
  gained by replacing the dummy values with more
  instance-specific strings, numbers, etc. While
  this could be tedious, there are only 2 of these
  and they are small.

9
Code Examples Work Remaining (cont.)

• README.html should explain how the ISO, IANA, and
  UNECE files do not necessary comply with the
  NDRG. They do not include the required
  documentation, it seems. This would be okay as an
  example of leveraging existing standards without
  modification.
• Use of xsddocumentation child elements based on
  (original) CCTS namespace is confusing and
  inconsistent.
• Other?

10
Comments Yet to be Addressed

• Sections 4-7 101 comments from Mike Grimley, Joe
  Chiusano, and Ken Sall
• Section 1-3 some comments remain unresolved,
  since there are two versions of Sec. 1-3.

11
Major Objections from IC MWG

• Common terrorism-related information sharing
  standards would not comply because the NDRG
• Prohibits the use of attributes (crucial to the
  IC for security markings already deployed).
• Disparages xsdchoice.
• Prohibits acronym/abbreviation use.
• Prohibits xsdunion need for our date/time
  extension of the various XSD date/time types.
• Etc.

12
Significant Assumptions About Scope

• XML Technologies out of scope
• Addresses only W3C XML Schema (WXS, aka XSD)
• Subset of XML concerned mainly with
  transaction-based systems
• Ignores DTD, RELAX NG and Schematron
• Ignores DOM, SAX, XSLT, XSL-FO, WSDL, SOAP,
  XQuery, etc.
• Governance
• Who will enforce with what sanctions?
• Registry
• Central or federated? Who will fund?
• How will element or type conflicts be resolved?
• Security
• How can agencies comply if they must restrict
  access?

13
Potential Ways Forward (not mutually exclusive)

• Minimal effort Publish as is to wider audience
• Knit together sections, add ToC and Appendices
• What audience? CIO Councils Architecture and
  Infrastructure Committee (AIC)? Specific agency
  CIOs?
• Solicit volunteers to edit next version (lead
  editor and assistants)
• Participants will influence justifications,
  objections, etc.
• Editor and contributors names should appear in
  final document
• Ask for funding to complete work. (GSA/OGP? AIC?)
• continued

14
Potential Ways Forward (cont.)

• Ask AIC to assign oversight committee.
• Determine Core NDRG rules (absolute MUSTs).
• Develop XML Schema to represent rules so they can
  be processed and extracted differently by
  different agencies.
• Work with UBL Technical Committee, especially G.
  Ken Holman and Anthony Coates to develop code
  list mechanism.

15
Why Propose an XML Schema for NDRG Rules?

• Ease of processing/filtering via XSLT
• Find all MUSTs and MUST NOTs.
• Find all SHOULDs and SHOULD NOTs.
• Find all rules with no objections.
• Find rules with objections that have no response.
• Find rules with no justifications.
• Find MUST/MUST NOT or SHOULD/SHOULD NOT rules
  that have exceptions.
• Create rule summary tables by category (since
  sections mix rules from different categories).
• Eat our own dog food. Make schema an informative
  example, including xsddocumentation as per NDRG.

16
NDRG Rule Schema Strawman 1
17
NDRG Rule Schema Strawman 1 (cont.)
18
Sample Rule Instance (shows 3 rules)
19
Sample Rule Instance (cont.)