SBIR-STTR Award

It is anticipated that XML will heavily dominate the next generation of telemetry systems. The syntax of XML-based languages can be constrained by a schema that describes the structure of valid documents and allowable values of attributes using data typing facilities. However, even on the syntactical level, the schemas cannot express all dependencies between XML elements and attributes, both within a single document and across multiple documents. This greatly complicates the validation process of XML data used in testing, because the process cannot be fully automated with standard schema processors. VIStology is proposing a solution that is based on Semantic Web technologies and allows different vendors and system integrators to independently develop their own semantic validation rules. Moreover, conflicts detected by the rules can be resolved with support of a solver.

Benefit:
(1) Different vendors and system integrators can independently specify their own validation rules. (2) The rules are equipped with powerful semantics, which allows for specification of constraints that any XML schema language could ever offer. (3) The approach is not specific to a particular T & E standard, it can be augmented to support validation of any XML-based standard. (4) The solution is entirely standards-based and thus should be cheaper for the government acquisition and maintenance.

Keywords:
Testing, XML, semant

It is anticipated that XML will continue to expand until it heavily dominates the next generation of telemetry systems. The XML language can be used to define the syntax of valid Test & Evaluation (T&E) documents. however, it does not capture the semantic rules (constraints) and thus system-level semantic validation cannot be accomplished automatically. The size of complete XML instances for large data systems is large and thus manual validation of these systems is not feasible either. New standards and methods must be developed for formally capturing semantic rules of T&E metadata and for automatic validation of related XML instances.VIStology and SwRI propose to develop an approach to capturing and automatically validating semantic constraints implemented in an open-source prototype of a semantic validation service (xVISor), which will enable truly multi-vendor T&E systems, adding to the success of prior RCC activities by encouraging and extending the possibility of further vendor interoperability. The effort will largely be focused on MDL, but the methodology will be applicable to any T&E standard. The approach will be evaluated using test cases co-developed with the T&E community.