Conformance & profiles

OpenRiC conformance is profile-based: a server declares which named capabilities it supports, and consumers know exactly what to expect - no all-or-nothing claim.

Profiles and levels

Two independent dimensions:

• Profile - which endpoints/entities are exposed (Core Discovery, Authority & Context, …). See the profiles tree.
• Level - how rigorously (L1 mapping → L2 API → L3 graph → L4 full).

A server declares one or more profiles and the level it meets for each, e.g. “Core Discovery at L2, Authority & Context at L1.”

The 12 profiles

Seven normative: Core Discovery, Authority & Context, Graph Traversal, Digital Object Linkage, Round-Trip Editing, Provenance & Event, Export-Only. Five draft: SPARQL Access, and the v0.43 governance line - Governance, Portability, Inferred-Provenance, Graph-Grounding.

Full catalogue: /spec/profiles/.

Declaring what you support

A server advertises its profiles in the service description at GET /api/ric/v1/:

{
  "name": "Example Archive Catalogue",
  "openric_conformance": {
    "spec_version": "0.42.x",
    "profiles": [
      { "id": "core-discovery", "version": "0.3.0", "conformance": "full" }
    ]
  }
}

Run the probe

The conformance probe is pure bash + jq - point it at any server:

BASE=https://ric.theahg.co.za/api/ric/v1 ./conformance/probe.sh
# → PASS GET /records [200] … Summary: 30 pass, 0 fail, 0 skip
# Scope to one profile:
BASE=https://ric.theahg.co.za/api/ric/v1 ./conformance/probe.sh --profile=core-discovery

It checks every documented endpoint and reports pass/fail; exit code 0 = conformant. With a KEY= it also exercises the write surface.

SHACL

Beyond endpoints, published graphs are validated against the SHACL shapes. The draft Governance profile makes SHACL a merge gate, wired into CI.

Next

• Build a conformant server
• The profiles tree