Application Profile Guidelines contain two parts:
* Part 1 - Management Overview
* Part 2 - Technical Manual
The Management Overview describes what an application profile is in the context of the IMS specifications and the benefits to be gained from undertaking such an exercise - namely more closely meeting the needs of the target user community whilst harnessing the specifications to aid integration and enhance interoperability between tools, products and services which vendors would supply to that community. Guidance is offered on the key factors for deciding whether or not to embark upon a profiling exercise and a process outlined for how to proceed with such an activity. Conformance issues around an application profile are briefly discussed, as are technology and implementation issues beyond the scope covered by the specifications.
The documents are offered as a guideline, based upon the experience of a number of user communities in adopting and implementing the specifications, in the hope that their experience will be useful to others facing the same issues which they have had to work through with their users and suppliers.
The Technical Manual describes, from a technical point of view, the profiling of specifications, primarily those developed by the IMS Global Consortium. However, the approach defined in the manual could also be applied to specifications developed by other organizations. In addition to evaluating the methods for defining an application profile, this document provides a means to represent changes to a specification in an XML form. The manual document also describes a way in which profiles could be tested for conformance purposes, but this is only provided as a suggestion rather than as a normative specification for conformance testing.
Application Profile Guidelines - HTML