Revamping utility toolkit

[wendellpiez]

User Story:

As an OSCAL user and developer, I need tools -- reliable, verifiable ways of getting at and working with my data. In the repo I can see there are a number of intriguing looking XSLTs and Schematrons but I don't know what they do or how to use them.

These utilities include means to:

• Reformat OSCAL as HTML for web display / consumption
• Basic (or more complex?) profile resolution or "collapsing" (Profile+Catalog -> rendered profile-as-applied-to-catalog)
• Validate complex co-occurrence constraints
  • e.g., hierarchical numbering schemes, referential integrity

While these apply to the catalog and profile layers, it is fair to assume we should have more at higher levels, even if (as) we encourage projects also to differentiate (meaning: specialized tools) at those levels. In other words we need a long term strategy for tools maintenance as well.

Goals:

• Update utilities published in the repo to make them accessible and usable
• Document how to use them (with examples of use?)
• Develop an interim or longer term strategy for tools maintenance (where to draw the line between these and tools best maintained outside)

Dependencies:

• We must survey and triage the available tools, prioritizing them for maintenance
  • capturing requirements for new tools if/as we come across them
  • further defining the "done" state for this Issue
• We must determine how / where they will be documented (initial strategy)
  • we have several options with various longer-term possibilities in mind
• Also see Update CSS to support data browsing and data entry oscal-tools#17, Auto-translation of NIST controls to Controls Markdown Language for human editing and maintenance OSCAL#1921, OSCAL toolchain: must be freely available and open source OSCAL#336

Acceptance Criteria

• Tools can be found in the repo
• They are documented along with their dependencies (either web site or repo/readme docs) and the docs are findable
• Documentation is deemed to be adequate in testing for basic application by self-guided new users (assuming skills with basic config, setup and execution at the CL)
• Parts of this Issue have spun to other Issues as appropriate - it could be broken up
• But all tools and utilities found in src/utils have been accounted for

[david-waltermire]

@wendellpiez Can you provide a status update on this issue? Also, can you create new issues in the appropriate repository for the work that needs to be done? Thanks!

[wendellpiez]

Since this Issue was written there are several developments that bear on it:

• Creation of the oscal-tools repository
• Likewise, the oscal-content repository now has tooling specific to data sets (such as NIST SP 800-53)
• Consolidating profile resolution logic inside the OSCAL repo

This more dispersed arrangement is alleviating the findability problems that the Issue was written to address. I am marking it as Closable and we can make a new Issue for new requirements in this area.

[aj-stein-nist]

Per discussion with the team today during backlog review, I am moving this to the appropriate repository per our guidance, oscal-xslt.