Description
At the February 28th, 2012 meeting of the Infrastructure Framework subcommittee, the members discussed the following topics:
1. TOPIC EMFW-21: Should we leave confidentiality, senderRole and recipentRole without default lists? (Answer: For senderRole and recipientRole, the resolution was to add a sentence or two to the specification to reference NIEM and ICS as examples of sender and recipient roles for guidance, but do not add them in as defaults for senderRole and recipientRole. The DE shouldn't endorse a particular list when there are many being considered by the community. For confidentiality, the resolution was to change the schema and the specification to provide a two value default: classified and unclassified. This will motivate further consideration by users for their choice of lists.)
2. TOPIC EMFW-20: Should the DE specification attempt to enforce the preservation of XML comments? (Answer: The DE specification is appropriately silent on the use of XML comments. As with traditional XML usage, comments can be used but preservation of comments is not an XML requirement. For example, some parsers and applications of signature usage do not preserve comments. Also the use of comments for substantive purposes is non-standard and should be discouraged.)
3. TOPIC EMFW-19: Should the DE specification require that order of elements be preserved beyond what is enforceable by XML schema validation? (Answer: No. Order of elements is required by XML Schema for certain elements, such as sequence, however it is not required by other elements, such as elements which can repeat by specifying cardinality. It would impose too much of a non-standard burden on parsers and systems to attempt to preserve order beyond what XML Schema specifies. Also relying on order for meaning is better handled by adding additional elements or attributes.)
4. TOPIC EMFW-18: Should the DE 2.0 data dictionary in the specification be revised to clarify the use of defaults? (Answer: Yes. First, StatusKindDefault and StatusKindValueList were left out of the data dictionary unintentionally, so those should be added. Second, to better explain defaults, a section 1.3.4 “Value Lists and Defaults” will be added to the specification with two paragraphs, one explaining Value Lists and their benefits and the other explaining how defaults work. )
