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ADR 010 OSLC RM and OSLC QM in v0.1

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Michael Zargham edited this page May 16, 2026 · 1 revision

ADR-010: OSLC-RM and OSLC-QM in v0.1

Status: Accepted Date: 2026-05-16 Deciders: Michael Zargham Related: ADR-011 Lossless Criterion A plus C; OSLC RM Adapter Contract; OSLC QM Adapter Contract; OSLC RM and QM Review; Lossless Roundtrip Definition; Design Spec

Context

Institutional adoption of flexo-rtm requires interoperability with the OSLC ecosystem — DOORS, Jama, Polarion, qTest, and other standards-conformant tools that institutions already have heavy investment in. OSLC-RM (Requirements Management) and OSLC-QM (Quality Management) are the relevant linked-data domains: RM is where requirement records, satisfies/satisfiedBy relations, and design-element links live; QM is where verification activities, test results, and verdicts live. A partial adapter (RM only) leaves the verification half of the RTM dependent on non-OSLC source data; no adapter at all forecloses the interoperability story entirely. The decisive constraint is that institutional partners have said explicitly: "we cannot get institutional adoption if we cannot demonstrably roundtrip losslessly." See Design Spec §9 and OSLC RM and QM Review.

Decision

flexo-rtm v0.1 ships full OSLC-RM adapter and full OSLC-QM adapter with lossless roundtrip tests (see ADR-011 Lossless Criterion A plus C and Lossless Roundtrip Definition). Both adapters support read (project upstream OSLC resources into the RTM graph) and write (project RTM-graph facts back to OSLC endpoints). Lossless roundtrip is a hard CI gate, not a "best-effort" claim.

Consequences

Positive

  • Institutional adoption is unblocked: adopters can integrate with existing OSLC-RM and OSLC-QM tools and demonstrate to their audit teams that no data is lost in translation
  • Verification coverage (the QM side) is on equal standing with requirement coverage (the RM side) — both halves of the RTM are first-class
  • The lossless roundtrip CI gate makes "we support OSLC" a verifiable claim, not a marketing statement
  • The OSLC adapter pattern is the integration surface that downstream identity and crypto adapters (see ADR-023 Cryptography by Composition of Battle-Tested Standards and ADR-024 Identity by Thin Projection of External Sources) follow as well

Negative / Tradeoffs

  • Two full adapters in v0.1 is significant implementation scope; the lossless requirement adds substantial test infrastructure
  • OSLC-RM and OSLC-QM both have vendor extensions that real adopters depend on — the lossless criterion has to handle them (see ADR-011 Lossless Criterion A plus C for the A+C combination that addresses this)
  • Adopters without OSLC sources can still use flexo-rtm (the RDF graph is the canonical authority), but they don't get the headline integration story

Neutral

Alternatives Considered

  • RM only: Ship OSLC-RM adapter, defer QM. Rejected: half-RTM. The institutional value of an RTM is precisely the bidirectional trace through requirements and verification. Verification coverage being non-OSLC means the QM half is non-integrated for the institutional partners that have the most legacy OSLC investment.
  • RM full + QM contract (no adapter): Document the QM adapter contract but defer the implementation. Rejected: the contract without an implementation is unverifiable. Lossless roundtrip is a CI-enforced property, not a documented intent.
  • Neither (RDF-native only, no OSLC): Ship the RDF graph and SHACL profiles with no OSLC adapters. Rejected: forecloses institutional adoption. The OSLC ecosystem is where the legacy investment is, and the design spec is explicit that adoption depends on demonstrable lossless integration.

Implementation Notes

OSLC-RM and OSLC-QM adapters live in oracle/src/oracle/storage/oslc/ (write-side adapters are part of the storage layer ingress per ADR-006 Three-Layer Architecture). The adapter contracts are documented in OSLC RM Adapter Contract and OSLC QM Adapter Contract. Lossless roundtrip tests (see Lossless Roundtrip Definition and ADR-011 Lossless Criterion A plus C) live in tests/oslc/ and are a hard CI gate. Vendor-extension carry-through (see Vendor Extension Carry-Through) is implemented as Layer C opaque carry of source-preserving graphs.

References

Start here

Foundation

Internal Research

External Research

v0.1 Certification Model

Roadmap and future work

Three-Layer Architecture

Ontology Design

Interface Contracts (normative)

Adapter Contracts (background)

Reproducibility

Open issues

Decision Log

Meta

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