Compliance Testing

• Importance of Compliance Testing
• Program Overview
• Program Documentation
• Trademark Licensing Fees
• Maximum Annual Trademark License Fees for Members
• Adding Products to a Trademark License during a Licensee's Trademark License Year
• Compliance Logos
• Go to the CITE Portal (online testing site)

The Importance of Compliance Testing

Compliance testing and the "Certified OGC Compliant" brand provide important benefits for product vendors and integrators as well as their customers and their customers’ stakeholders.

For technology providers, compliance testing and branding are important because interoperability has become a high priority for users, who are increasingly insisting on compliance when they purchase software. The "Certified OGC Compliant" brand gives customers as much assurance as possible that their products and solutions will be able to interoperate with other systems that have properly implemented OGC standards. And the "Certified OGC Compliant" brand gives integrators confidence that they will be able to efficiently integrate vendors' products as components in the solutions the integrators provide. OGC standards have been an important contributing factor in the growth of the geospatial market, and OGC compliance is increasingly necessary for technology providers to participate in this expanded market.

For purchasers of geospatial technology products and services, reduced technology risk is an important benefit, and the "Certified OGC Compliant" brand instills trust that this benefit will materialize. That is, compliant products are more likely to interoperate with all of the following: legacy systems that have been upgraded with interfaces that implement OGC standards; components and solutions purchased in the future from different vendors and integrators; and with systems used by data sharing partners.

For purchasers, the "Certified OGC Compliant" brand can not only save money, it can also ensure user and citizen access to essential services and information. Making the visitor’s or user’s experience as error free as possible is important to maintaining an agency's credibility. Accountability is important: Who is responsible for a particular online service? The "Certified OGC Compliant" brand will probably never be seen by the agency’s or data or service provider’s users, but those users will get more reliable service, they will spend less time and money converting between data formats, and they will benefit from the earlier arrival of new products and services.

Compliance testing does not guarantee interoperability, and compliance testing and certification apply only to server-side software. Nevertheless, demanding the "Certified OGC Compliant" brand doesn’t cost buyers of geospatial software and solutions anything, and it both saves money and helps move the industry forward to a future in which interoperability is no longer an issue.

Compliance Testing Program Overview

The OGC Compliance Testing Program allows organizations that implement an OGC standard to test whether their implementation is compliant with the mandatory elements of that standard. The program provides a well-documented process for testing compliance of server implementations of OGC standards. Currently this Program only tests server products. In other words, the Program can only test whether server products generate compliant responses. The program does not presently offer capability to test compliance of client side products, although this capability is being considered for future compliance testing.

When an organization has completed, to their satisfaction, compliance testing for one or more standards, the following occurs:

• OGC staff confirms successful completion of the compliance test;
• The implementing organization agrees to the terms of the OGC Trademark License Agreement;
• The organization pays the required trademark license fees.

Organizations that successfully follow these steps may use OGC marks (trademarks or certification marks) in product literature, on their web site, and in other sales and marketing materials to indicate that they have achieved compliance for one or more OGC Standards.

After an implementation is verified as passing the compliance tests for a standard, OGC staff generally takes from 1-2 weeks to process the paperwork and issue a certificate of compliance, not including the time for the applicant to submit paperwork and license fees.

OGC compliance tests are available for some but not all OGC standards. The OGC is continually enhancing and expanding the Compliance Testing Program as resources allow. The current two phases are:

• Compliance Testing: This determines that an implementation fulfills all mandatory elements of a particular version of an OGC standard. Compliance testing may become more stringent over time, especially as a particular OGC standard matures.

  NOTE: Compliance testing WILL NOT ensure, or even test, interoperability between different software products, or between a single product's implementation of different versions of a given OGC standard. However, as a standard matures, the likelihood of interoperability will increase.

• Interoperability Testing: OGC's ultimate goal is to provide a process for testing interoperability between compliant products. Interoperability Testing will determine that a product's implementation of a Specification interoperates with:

  1. other products' implementations of the same Specification
  2. a single product's implementation of an OGC Standard across heterogeneous computing environments. As envisioned, interoperability testing will be implemented as a service and will not result in the use of OGC marks.

   

Testing Program Documentation

The Compliance Testing document (see URL below) describes the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Compliance Testing Program. The document defines the approach, including policies and procedures, that the OGC uses for compliance testing of server side implementations of specific OGC standards. The primary purpose of the testing program is to provide the implementation community to self-test their implementations of one or more OGC standards. The program is also designed to provide users of products that implement OGC standards assurance that the implementation supports the necessary mandatory elements. Implementers may test as many times as necessary at no cost. When compliance has been confirmed, implementers who agree to the terms of the trademark license may affix OGC's certification mark to their products. This mark indicates that compliance with one or more OGC standards has been achieved, thereby providing incentives for potential customers to preferentially purchase such products. A fully executed OGC Trademark License Agreement, fully paid trademark license fees, and full compliance with the Trademark License Agreement terms are mandatory for an organization to use the "Certified OGC Compliant" mark with its product(s) in any way or to claim "compliance" with OGC Implementation Specifications. A full list of currently available compliance tests may be found in the box to the upper right.

NOTE: When using the OGC Web-based Compliance Testing Engine, submitting your test results electronically is only part of the submission process. Please refer to the documentation linked below for complete instructions on how to submit for OGC compliance.

Trademark Licensing Fees

OGC will not charge a fee for compliance testing under the Testing Procedure.

OGC will charge a fee for trademark licensing for Candidate Products that successfully pass a compliance test under the Testing Procedure; this fee is termed the Trademark Licensing Fee. This fee must be paid by organizations that wish to claim compliance with OGC Implementation Specifications. This fee is not required to initiate and complete a test. The current fee structure is found in the table below and in Appendix G-Trademark Licensing Fees of the Compliance Testing Program document.

OGC will invoice a Candidate Organization that has submitted a Test Summary Report for the Trademark License Fee. This invoice must be paid before OGC will issue a Compliance Certificate and before OGC will deliver a countersigned Trademark License Agreement.

The governing information for Trademark Licensing Fees is contained in Appendix G-Trademark Licensing Fees of the Compliance Testing Program document, from which the information below is taken.

The following schedule defines the annual fees that an organization must pay in order to use the OGC Certification Mark in connection with any of its product that has successfully passed a compliance test under OGC's Compliance Testing Program. The fees described below are subject to change without notice.

Each Licensee pays an annual Trademark License Fee per Product Version, per Implementation Specification tested, and based on the TLA date on which the first Product/Implementation Specification was certified compliant-the "Trademark License Year". The amount of the Trademark License Fee is based upon the Total Gross Annual Revenue ("TGAR") of the parent corporation. The Trademark License Fee is not based on the annual gross revenues of an operating division, a wholly owned subsidiary, or the GIS, geospatial, or software-related revenues of a corporation.

Maximum Annual Trademark License Fees for Members

The OGC Annual Trademark License fee structure includes a maximum ceiling on the payments for Trademark License fees for members at the Technical, Planning, and Strategic levels. Many of our members have multiple products and multiple implementations that could enjoy the benefits of OGC branding and this ceiling rewards those members who participate at the higher levels.

Individual Member: The maximum annual Trademark License Fees that an Individual Member licensee will pay per Trademark License Year is equal to the total number of Product Version/Implementation Specification combinations being trademarked multiplied by the Associate Member fee from the table below.

Associate Member: The maximum annual Trademark License Fees that an Associate Member licensee will pay per Trademark License Year is equal to the total number of Product Version/Implementation Specification combinations being trademarked multiplied by the Associate Member fee from the table below.

Technical Member: The maximum annual Trademark License Fees a Technical Member licensee will pay per Trademark License Year is equal to four times (4X) the Trademark License Fee for its TGAR, even if the Technical Member licensee wishes the Trademark License to cover more than four Product Version/Implementation Specification combinations that have successfully passed compliance testing.

Principal Member: The maximum annual Trademark License Fees a Principal Member licensee will pay is equal to two times (2X) the Trademark License Fee for its TGAR, even if the Principal Member licensee wishes the Trademark License to cover more than two Product Version/Implementation Specification combinations that have successfully passed compliance testing.

Strategic Member: The maximum annual Trademark License Fees a Strategic Member licensee will pay is equal to one time (1X) the Trademark License Fee for its TGAR, even if the Strategic Member licensee wishes the Trademark License to cover more than one Product Version/Implementation Specification combination that has successfully passed compliance testing.

Adding Products to a Trademark License during a Licensee's Trademark License Year

When an existing licensee adds a Product that has successfully passed compliance testing during the Trademark License Year, the appropriate Trademark License Fee for each such Product is pro-rated for the balance of the Trademark License Year on a whole month basis. When the number of Products licensed during a licensee's Trademark License Year exceeds the cap for a licensee's OGC membership level, if applicable, no additional Trademark License Fee is assessed.

Please contact the compliance [at] opengeospatial [dot] org (OGC Compliance Testing Coordinator) if you have specific questions concerning the Testing Program.