The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has announced a new release of the XML Schema Quality of Design Tool (QOD) from the Manufacturing Engineering Lab. "QOD assists in consistently using XML Schema for the specification of information. QOD is intended for both people developing guidelines for writing high quality XML schemas and those writing XML schemas. The purpose of QOD is to improve the quality of the XML schemas. The system allows users to define rules for writing quality XML Schemas and to test schemas against those rules.

This release of the tool includes improvements to the user interface, performance, and display of results, support for ISO Schematron for writing tests, and the addition of an import and export capability to facilitate offline development of tests. The QOD site also contains a number of sample sets of tests for XML Schema Naming and Design Rule (NDR) specifications. In addition to the improvements to the tool, the number of tests available also has been expanded. Extensive sets of test based on the following specifications are available:

• OAGIS 9.0 XML Naming and Design Rules Standard;
• IRS XML Standards and Guidelines;
• Department of the Navy XML Naming and Design Rules.

Several of the XML Naming and Design Rules specifications in use are derived from work pioneered in the OASIS UBL Technical Committee and the UN/CEFACT Forum. Together with the OASIS UBL NDR specification, the UN/CEFACT NDR document is one of the foundational NDRs developed in accordance with the UN/CEFACT Core Components Technical Specification (CCTS).

Read the complete article by Robin Cover, Cover Pages.