Change Request

Requirement

What has changed and why

Received consultation comments insisted on clarifying that the Examples/Notes is informative only. With as consequence that:

• the Examples/Notes should not require additional elements (such as the AIRM version);
• the Examples/Notes should not deal with special cases;
• the normative part of the requirement (i.e. the rest of the requirement table) should deal with these explicitly. 

As a result the Convention section and several requirements were updated. 

The updates for requirement  SWIM-SERV-023 AIRM conformance concern the following: 

AIRM version 

This AIRM version was mentioned in the Examples/Notes as something expected to be included.

This AIRM version has been moved to the normative part (requirement and verification texts).

This change is not questioned by the CR and is not subject to be reverted.

Non-conformance to AIRM 

The non-conformance was not mentioned in the requirement. It was not clear whether this is a special case that was not made explicit in the Examples/Notes, or whether this was explicitly excluded.

Note about another requirement: The SWIM-SERV-027 Service validation requirement had been updated to make the special case "no validation performed" explicit in the normative part. The underlying being that the role of a conformant service description is to clearly inform service consumers about the validation status of a service, and not to forbid conformant service descriptions for services that have not been validated.

Two lines of actions were possible

1. either, non-conformance to the AIRM is completely excluded for a conformant service description
   1. This line of action is supported by the absence of mentioning non-conformance to the AIRM in the specification sent for consultation
      
      
2. or, the role of a conformant service description is to clearly inform service consumers about the AIRM conformance status of a service, but not to enforce it. Leaving this role to the Information Definition specification. 
   1. This line of action is supported by the applicability of these specifications

A choice had to be made between these 2 lines of actions. The second line of action has been chosen for the publication.

This change is fully questioned by the CR and is subject to be revereted.

Options

Two main options are available, these are aligned to the two lines of actions exposed before:

1. either the text is reverted-back, as requested in the CR.
   1. This requires an update to the specification
      
      
2. or, the text is maintained as is and explained.
   1. This requires to the above explanation to be added to the Handbook (specification remaining as it is)

Option A: Revert back (as requested by CR)

"Revert back to the requirements text as it was in the draft Specification documents subject of public consultation."

Note: the revert back should only affect the changes mentioned in the CR.

Option B: Maintain and explain (explanation in supporting material)

The explanation, as indicated above, would be added as Supporting Material for that requirement.

This would clarify that AIRM conformance is required by the Information Definition specification.

This is inline with applicability section of the respective SWIM specifications.

Discussion

Elements of discussion on the options

comment received during 2019-01-28 SSCONE webex

• O. mentions that AIRM conformance may come for free when using an Exchange Model (such as AIXM or FIXM) that is already traced to AIRM.
• O. prefers the option "revert back", as semantic interoperability is an essential goal to achieve.