CDIF Conformance

A Brief History of CDIF Conformance

The definition of what exactly constitutes CDIF Conformance is not straightforward: The CDIF Family of Standards consists of a number of widely orthogonal technologies but with some dependencies, and any conformance definition must communicate clearly to the end user what parts of CDIF the tool is conformant to &endash; a statement such as "Tool X is CDIF conformant" does not really mean anything, given the significant size of standardized CDIF technology.

CDIF has formally adopted the definition of what CDIF Conformance means in March 1996. The just of the Conformance Definition is that the tool vendor publishes a CDIF Conformance Statement in which they specify in detail what parts of CDIF they are conformant to and how. A Conformance Statement is quite detailed and might require a little work on the part of the vendor who is interested in claiming CDIF conformance. On the other hand, just by analyzing two Conformance Statements from two vendors, a user can gain a very good understanding what concepts users will be able to exchange between those tools using what mechanism, making the term "CDIF Conformant" very meaningful to the user.

There is no official CDIF Conformance Testing body at this point. Vendors can essentially self-certify by publishing a Conformance Statement. If you are interested in providing CDIF Conformance Testing services, the CDIF officers would like to get in touch with you.

CDIF Conformance Definition

The formal CDIF Conformance Definition can be found here.

CDIF Conformance Statement Templates

In order to make the CDIF Conformance Statement easier for a tool vendor, CDIF intends to publish document templates that can be filled out by a tool vendor and act as their CDIF Conformance Statement. This is an open action item.

Last modified: 97-05-09 by CDIF Webmaster.Copyright (C) 1997 EIA/CDIF. All rights reserved.
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