DEVIDENCE Acquisition and Representation Conformance Profile

Version 0.2

Status: ADOPTED EXTERNAL CONFORMANCE PROFILE

Authority scope: implementations explicitly claiming this profile and version

Base Layer authority: NONE

Pre-adoption governing DEVIDENCE standards commit: c360f66bd624d9c7c57dbf7f7327197a1184aedd

This document is an adopted external conformance profile. It does not amend DEVIDENCE Base Layer meanings and does not become part of Base Layer conformance merely by being present in the standards repository.

Normative keywords such as SHALL, SHALL NOT, SHOULD, and MAY apply only to an implementation that explicitly claims conformance with this profile and version. They have no Base Layer force.

Purpose

This profile defines testable implementation behavior for acquisition and materialization using existing DEVIDENCE meanings. It does not introduce new evidence-object types.

Conformance observations

An implementation claiming this profile SHALL preserve these observations separately:

Acquisition result — PASS, FAIL, PARTIAL, or UNKNOWN for the attempted acquisition, with route/tool/provenance sufficient to explain the result.
Representation identity — source- and contract-appropriate identity for the exact representation observed or preserved. A cryptographic digest SHALL be recorded when the source, transport, profile, or governing contract provides or requires one. This profile does not require one universal digest algorithm for every representation.
Integrity comparison — when an expected identity or integrity constraint exists, the observed representation SHALL be compared against it and the result recorded separately as PASS, FAIL, or UNKNOWN.
Materialization result — for compound/container sources, PASS, FAIL, PARTIAL, or UNKNOWN for the requested member/record/span. Successful container acquisition SHALL NOT imply successful member materialization.
Bounded representation-adequacy assertion — when an implementation judges whether a representation can support an intended claim or transformation, it SHALL record:
- the explicit target claim or transformation;
- the evidence basis used for the judgment;
- PASS, FAIL, or UNKNOWN;
- a claim ceiling describing what the result does not establish.
This assertion is a conformance test result. It is not a truth score, confidence score, authority score, or new Base Layer evidence type.
Reproducible provenance — route, tool/version, source identity, representation identity, transformation/materialization path, and source-supported unknowns needed to reproduce or audit the result.

Required failure semantics

An implementation claiming this profile SHALL NOT:

report acquisition PASS solely because an output file exists;
report acquisition FAIL solely because an observed representation has zero bytes;
convert acquisition failure or member-not-found into source absence;
infer member success from container success;
report the observed representation as the expected artifact when an integrity comparison fails;
infer truth, authority, or completeness from preservation, retrieval success, or identity;
discard already valid materialized members solely because a later container member fails, when member boundaries and identity are independently established.

For a PARTIAL container/materialization result, successfully materialized members MAY support claims bounded to those members. The failed or unparsed remainder SHALL remain explicitly failed, unavailable through that path, or UNKNOWN as supported by the evidence.

Minimum conformance vectors

The implementation SHOULD be tested against at least:

successful claim-bearing HTTP acquisition;
failed or inadequate HTTP acquisition;
non-empty local-file success;
intentionally empty local-file success;
missing local source;
expected-identity mismatch;
successful compound/container acquisition;
intentionally empty container member;
missing container member;
member integrity mismatch;
malformed/truncated container;
partially recoverable container with at least one independently valid member;
bounded adequacy PASS, FAIL, and UNKNOWN cases.

Authority boundary

This profile has conformance authority only for implementations that explicitly claim this profile and version. It does not amend DEVIDENCE Base Layer meanings, establish truth, grant authority to evidence merely because it was preserved or retrieved, or authorize other profiles. Changes to this profile remain subject to governance under the then-current DEVIDENCE standards.

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