scope:

The present document defines the full set of checks to be performed for testing actual conformity of XAdES signatures against TS 103 171: "XAdES Baseline Profile" [2], a profile specified for TS 101 903: "XML Advanced Electronic Signatures (XAdES)" [1].

The present document specifies the whole set of checks that any tool claiming conformance to the present document, will have to perform on XAdES signatures claiming conformance to TS 103 171: "XAdES Baseline Profile" [2] for fully assessing actual conformance. In consequence, any signature that is successfully tested by such a tool will actually be considered compliant with the TS 103 171 [2], and in consequence it is expected that such a signature will be treated as such by any application.

The present document does not specify checks leading to conclude whether a signature is technically valid or not (for instance, it does not specify checks for determining whether the cryptographic material present in the signature may be considered valid or not). In consequence, readers of the present document are kindly noticed that no conclusion may be inferred regarding the technical validity of a signature that has been successfully tested by any tool conformant to the present document. The only possible inferences are the ones explicitly mentioned in the second paragraph of the present clause.

Checks specified by the present document are exclusively constrained to elements specified by XAdES [1] and to certain elements specified by XMLSig [3] that are re-used in XAdES schema definition (like ds:DigestMethod, ds:DigestValue), or those ones on what XAdES baseline profile specifies additional requirements ( like ds:Transform, ds:CanonicalizationMethod).

Regarding XAdES properties, the present document explicitly differentiates between structural requirements that are defined by the XAdES XML Schema, and the rest of the requirements specified by XAdES [1] and XAdES baseline profile [2]. Checks corresponding to the first set of requirements are specified in the normative Annex A. Checks corresponding to the second set of requirements are specified in the body part of the present document. Presentation of these checks is organized following the four conformance levels specified by XAdES Baseline Profile [2] as indicated below.

Clause 5 documents checks for testing conformance to B-Level as specified in XAdES Baseline Profile [2].

Clause 6 documents checks for testing conformance to T-Level as specified in XAdES Baseline Profile [2].

Clause 7 documents checks for testing conformance to LT-Level as specified in XAdES Baseline Profile [2].

Clause 8 documents checks for testing conformance to LTA-Level as specified in XAdES Baseline Profile [2].

Normative Annex A documents checks directly derived from XAdES XML Schema.

The present document is intentionally not linked to any software development technology and is also intentionally agnostic on implementation strategies. This is one of the reasons why the test assertions set specified in the present document includes tests on the correctness of the structure of all the elements specified by XAdES [1].