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January 26, 2023

Overview

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Ground Rules

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Review of Current and Completed Work

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Help Needed

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POAM JSON and XML Discrepancy (usnistgov/OSCAL#1618)

  • AJ summarized the technical details of the issue with Dave and Wendell
  • Community Attendee #1 concurred with analysis but did not have a strong inclination, but we cause breakage now or later
  • Community Attendee #1 asked questions if there are problems with conversion, Wendell confirmed that the conversion is not impacted, just the ergonomics of the discrepancy between both
  • Community Attendee #1 pointed out he has not attempted round-trip conversion. Wendell and AJ concurred we should test round-tripping just in case.
  • Michaela asked how it works in the CLI tool regarding this issue. Wendell explained how Metaschema cross-references XML and JSON differences through the group-as construct. Dave further explained how the XSLT and Java-based CLI both operate on this aliasing syntax.
  • Dave posed a valid question: is there anyone who cannot continue development with the OSCAL POA&M model as-is?
    • Community Attendee #1 says it does not impacted him directly or immediately.
    • Community Attendee #2 says they similarly are not impacted, but believes it be better to fix it sooner rather than later.
    • Dmitry said it will not impact him but largely due to the benefits of using JSON Schema with Typescript and his tooling choices.
  • Dave asked for a show of hands for anyone directly impacted by this change.
  • Michaela and others sought recommendations and methods to find information from other stakeholders who actively use JSON models, specifically the POA&M model and seek their perspective
  • Dave summarized views and said if no concrete feedback is received, we plan the change for v2.0.0 release.
  • AJ proposed he can lead a public notification and RFC process for this change.

Open Question and Answers

  • Community Attendee #1 brought up usnistgov/OSCAL#961 and the implications of usnistgov/OSCAL#1618.
    • If the shape of a model changes, and we suppose that users have intra-document relationships in cross-referenced document instances, it will be challenging with document instances that might not always have the oscal-versions declared.
    • Community Member #1 asked: would signficant changes warrant a new namespace for a major version change?
  • Wendell, Community Attendee #1, Dave, and AJ discussed the long-term implications of XML namespaces in maintaining document instances
  • Dave recommended the XML namespace management, JSON management strategy, and their relationship to the model management strategy be discussed and handled.
  • Michaela proposed for consideration that we seek an avenue for creating an automated transcript of the meetings. AJ recommended we consider that in a different venue as the meeting was ending.

Slides

You can download the meeting's slide deck from here.

This page was last updated on June 28, 2023.