EIRA© conformance testing support is now extended to allow the validation of solutions against one or more detail-level SATs.
The European Interoperability Reference Architecture (EIRA©) is a reference architecture for delivering interoperable digital public services across borders and sectors defining architecture building blocks (ABBs) organised in four views. It is technology and product neutral, follows a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and is aligned to the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) and TOGAF©.
The Test Bed has been supporting the EIRA© by realising its conformance testing needs allowing for architecture models to be validated against its conformance testing profiles. Validation is possible via multiple channels, notably:
- The standalone EIRA© validator, available via its web user interface and SOAP web service API.
- The public EIRA© community on the ISA² Test Bed that extends the core validator with rich monitoring and reporting.
Conformance testing is organised in profiles that allow validation of the various types of architecture models that can be produced using the EIRA©. The conformance profiles that existed up to now allowed the validation of a model against EIRA© guidelines and best practices, specifically:
- Solution completeness: Validation of a solution model against the EIRA©.
- SAT completeness: Validation of a Solution Architecture Template (SAT) against the EIRA©.
The available conformance profiles are now extended with the detail-level SAT conformance for solutions. Solution Architecture Templates are key EIRA© concepts, as they represent its mechanism to model, formalise and communicate requirements. In the case of detail-level SATs, the focus is on the specific building blocks and interoperability specifications that solutions are expected to implement. The new conformance testing profile is of particular importance as it provides a practical tool that can be used for the quality control of solutions, validating them against requirements in an unambiguous and deterministic way.
The next step in the EIRA©'s conformance testing implementation is the support of the EIRA© Library of Interoperability Specifications (ELIS) that lists the best-in-class specifications per EIRA© architecture building block. The conformance profile implementation shall allow solutions and detail-level SATs to be validated in terms of the specifications they define to highlight cases were the ELIS proposes potentially better alternatives.
Further information on the EIRA© and SATs can be found in the EIRA©'s Joinup space. If you are new to the Test Bed you are invited to check its information in Joinup, with its value proposition being an ideal starting point. Finally, to remain updated of all the latest Test Bed news:
