Consistent Collections of Children Objects in JSON

[rgauss]

User Story:

As an OSCAL developer working with JSON, I want to be able to consistently process collections of children objects as arrays so that I don't have to switch between parsing methods for different elements of the model.

Goals:

Currently the modeling of collections of children objects is somewhat inconsistent throughout OSCAL.

For example, in the component definition the components use a group-by of BY_KEY with the uuid as the key resulting in each child component being represented as a key/value, while the control-implementations use a group-by of BY_ARRAY and also contain a uuid resulting in an array of control-implementations.

The majority of group-as references in the OSCAL schema should use BY_ARRAY for consistency and more common parsing methods in JSON tools. An exception may be where the key defines a unique relationship to the parent, such as responsible-roles which uses BY-KEY, but the role-id is a key that defines a relationship like supplier.

Dependencies:

N/A

Acceptance Criteria

• All OSCAL website and readme documentation affected by the changes in this issue have been updated. Changes to the OSCAL website can be made in the docs/content directory of your branch.
• A Pull Request (PR) is submitted that fully addresses the goals of this User Story. This issue is referenced in the PR.
• The CI-CD build process runs without any reported errors on the PR. This can be confirmed by reviewing that all checks have passed in the PR.

{The items above are general acceptance criteria for all User Stories. Please describe anything else that must be completed for this issue to be considered resolved.}

[butler54]

Fantastic idea :)

[david-waltermire]

PR #923 fully addresses this issue and is ready to review.

[david-waltermire]

Merged PR #923.