Galdos Systems has consulted on, and conducted, a number of schema audits. Investing in standards is pointless unless the schemas being developed conform to the corresponding standard. To assist with the work of auditing schemas, Galdos has developed a number of test suites for various open standards.
Schema Audits
Galdos has a well-tested process for conducting schema audits. Schema auditing is a combination of manual work and automated validation. The first step in a schema audit is to check that the schema properly conforms to a given standard. The next step is to ensure that the schema defines data in a way that is valid, sensible, and reasonable. Because a schema can include sub schemas, the aggregate of all the schemas must be considered, as well as the individual schemas themselves. The whole schema must be validated as reasonable and sensible. The final step is to verify that the schema adheres to the general rules governing all GML application schemas.
Galdos uses the GML SDK™ and the Arbitron™ test harness as tools to help automate some of the work for a schema audit. Using these tools can reduce the manual workload and highlight where the schema being audited does not conform to the relevant standard.
Once the schema audit is complete, Galdos documents the findings from the audit and provides recommendations on how to resolve the issues found. If requested, Galdos can also assist in writing a revised schema and, if necessary, develop transformation scripts to convert data to the updated schema.
Galdos conducted the original audit of the AIXM 5.0 schema for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Recommendations for changes to the schema were incorporated into the development of AIXM 5.1.
Galdos consulted on the audit of the Data Interchange for Geotechnical and GeoEnvironmental Specialists (DIGGS) schema, and provided recommendations for improvements related to data sharing.
Test Suite Development
Galdos has used Arbitron to develop abstract test suites and executable test suites for various standards. An abstract test suite for a standard is a collection of test cases designed to cover all the assertions in the functional specification. An executable test suite is developed from an abstract test suite, and is designed to verify that what is being tested actually conforms to the specification. Abstract and executable test suites have been developed for:
- GeoRSS GML
- CSW eb-RIM Catalogue
- WFS 1.0
- KML 2.2
The KML Validator™ is an example of online service which Galdos created using Arbitron and the executable test suite for KML. Galdos launched the KML Validator as a free online service (limited only by the size of the files that can be submitted and that files can only be validated one at a time). The commercially licensed product is available without any limits on file size or on the number of concurrent files that can be processed programatically.
Galdos has participated in the ongoing OGC Compliance and Interoperability Testing and Evaluation (CITE) initiative, and in many projects that are part of the ongoing series of OGC Web Services (OWS) testbed.
