eForms SDK 0.6.0

SDK 0.6.0 Release Notes

Below is a list of the major updates made to the SDK in this release.

The documentation for the SDK is available at https://docs.ted.europa.eu. The source for this documentation is maintained in the eforms-docs repository.

eForms expression language

We have created a domain-specific language named "eForms expression language", or EFX, that we use in several ways described below.

This language is defined in a formal grammar, available in the efx-grammar folder. We provide a parser and a translator to XPath as a Java library named 'efx-toolkit-java', available on GitHub.

You can find more information about EFX in the corresponding section of the documentation.

View templates

To standardise the way a notice can be visualised, independently of the media format used (PDF, HTML etc.), we have created a set of "view templates".

Every notice subtype can be associated with one or more different view templates. These templates are available in the view-templates folder. The template files use the EFX template syntax.

To demonstrate the usage of these view templates, we provide a sample application named 'eforms-notice-viewer', available on GitHub.

You can find more information about view templates in the corresponding section of the documentation.

Codelists

Codelists have been updated to take into account the latest publication on EU Vocabularies.

eForms schemas

No changes in this version.

Schematron rules

Change notices

A first set of rules specific to change notices have been added. For the information that cannot be changed via a change notice, these rules check that the values are identical in the notice that is referenced by the change notice.

Translation of messages

Instead of a message in English, each Schematron rules now contains a code that corresponds to a specific message. The texts of these messages are provided in the translations folder, in the files rule_*.xml, and they will be available in all EU official languages in the future.

Rule identifier

Each assert element in Schematron now has an id attribute, indicating the unique identifier for the rule. This identifier also appears in validation report, making it easier to pinpoint the corresponding rule.

Added and updated rules

Various new rules have been added, in particular for information that is allowed or mandatory only under certain conditions.
Existing rules have been refined and improved.

Example Notices

The XML notices in the "examples" folder have been updated to take into account the updated schematron rules.

New examples were added:

• Prior information notice with the EU Financial Regulation as legal basis
• Contract award notice with several buyers from different countries
• Invalid change notice with changes that are not allowed

The validation reports have been regenerated, incorporating all the changes listed above.

Fields

New syntax for conditions

The conditions are now written using the EFX language, which makes them easier to read, and offers more flexibility to express complex conditions.

Maximum number of characters

The maximum number of characters allowed for a field is now indicated directly in a new maxLength property, instead of via a regular expression pattern.

Notice types

Definitions for all notice subtypes were updated to the latest version used by the eNotices2 application.
The name of 4 files were corrected.

The legal basis indicated for one document type has been corrected.

Translations

Translations for several items in codelists have been updated.

An initial version of the messages for schematron rules is available in English, and ome preliminary translations are provided in French and Greek. Those texts will be reviewed and completed in the future.