Validation

For validation purposes, the ESPD-EDM makes use of two different solutions: Schematron enforced Business rules and the Interoperability TestBed.

Schematron

Schematron is a rule-based validation language to specify validation processes against XML documents. ISO Schematron is an ISO (ISO/IEC 19757-3:2006) and open standard. Please visit the ISO Schematron website for the technical specification and details.

The ESPD-EDM uses Schematron to validate business rules. The business requirements taken as input for these rules are specified in the ESPDint Business Document.

These business rules can be typified as:

• Semantic validations: e.g. The "cac:TenderingCriterionResponse" in a Response document MUST match one, and only one, of the "cac:TenderingCriterionProperty" elements in the XML instance of the corresponding ESPD-Request;

• Assertions about the presence or absence of patterns in XML documents: e.g. all business rules that apply to identifier nodes: mandatory attributes, structure of the identifier, etc.;

• Code lists validations: e.g. values and attributes for each code list element;

• Other validations that an XSD cannot do: e.g. Validates that one of the nodes has at least 1 child.

For more information about the Schematron Architecture in ESPD-EDM, refer to Section 7.Validation of the online documentation (Technical Handbook).

Interoperability TestBed

The European Commission (EC) ISA2 Programme provides an Interoperability Testbed where Stakeholders can freely test these validation artefacts.

All the ESPD-EDM artefacts necessary to perform the validation are set up in the testbed. Thus, developers and integrators can test the validity of the ESPD-Request and ESDP-Response XML instances by uploading the instances in the testbed and launching the validation.

Use this URL to upload and execute the validations.