Improve Content Testing for Manufacturing Integration Solutions

Integration projects are complicated, extremely expensive and prone to failure. Successful integration involves four stages: (1) specification creation, (2) specification validation, (3) formal test methods, tools, and data sets, and (4) implementation.  Failures in any of these stages can lead to project failure. This project focuses on the first three phases.  It has been collaborating with two manufacturing standards development organizations: UN/CEFACT and OAGIS.  UN/CEFACT published a number of E-Commerce related standards. OAGIS published a collection of supply-chain standards used by both the aerospace and automotive industries. Each has also published a set of guidelines, called naming and design (NDR) rules, which govern both the creation and use of these standards.  In FY06, OAGIS, and UN/CEFACT asked us to develop a strategy for verifying that existing standards conformed to these guidelines.

A common approach to integration is data exchange. In other words, the data from one system is given to another system, which is able to perform a different set of functions on that data and/or may reside in a different location under different ownership.  The XML family of standards [2] has been developed to address the need for a format in which to transfer data between software systems. Many groups have adopted these standards as a basis for defining their own formats for data exchange. These specifications define the terms to be used to exchange data between different systems; however, the definition of these specifications is a challenge in itself. The more diverse the systems sharing the data are, the more complex the task is of defining the specification for data exchange. 

In order to facilitate the specification of the data, groups provide guidelines on how the XML standards should be used in their contexts. Many such guidelines have been published and more are unpublished. These guidelines are generically referred to as XML Schema Naming and Design Rules or NDRs. Similarly, once specifications have been defined for data exchange, how the data from a given system will be expressed in that specification is also subject to guidance. This guidance is less often published in formal documentation but is nonetheless important for accurate data exchange.

This project is developing two tools to aid in this process: the Quality of Design (QOD) Testing Tool and the Content Checker . Users can submit their own rules and tests to use in checking schemas, share those tests with other people (including anonymous users), test XML schemas , and, track the results from testing your schemas. 

The QOD tool aids in the definition of tests for XML Schema specifications. QOD is intended for both people developing guidelines for writing high quality XML schemas and those writing XML schemas. The purpose of QOD is to provide a prototypical environment for improving the quality of the XML schemas. The QOD site contains sample sets of design quality guidelines (aka rules) for XML schemas as well as tests for some of those rules. As a guest user, you may use these rules to check whether a schema that you are developing or uses meets those guidelines. More advanced users are able to create their own rules and make sets of rules available to their communities.

The Content Checker tool aids in the definition of tests for the XML instance data.  The Content Checker assists in the application of XML Schema specifications to real business transactions. Many content standards are emerging today based on XML Schema. These specifications define semantics and structure for data to be exchanged between systems. However, in the interest of creating reusable standards, the specifications often do not capture the full range of semantics which will be needed in individual transactions. The Content Checker seeks to complement XML schemas by providing a facility to precisely specify, share, extend, and test for conformance data being exchanged based on semantics not captured in an XML schema.