Table of Contents
An APS Application certification has been created to distinguish the appropriately packaged application from ones that do not follow the APS Packaging guidelines.
There are two APS Application certification levels:
Silver. "Works with APS"
Gold. "Designed for APS"
Informally, the difference between these levels is that Gold applications, the highest level, follow the best practices for APS packaging, while Silver applications comply only to the mandatory rules. The formal set of requirements for each level is provided in the Section 3, “Requirements”.
This section provides the generic outline of the APS Application Certification.
The procedure for obtaining APS Application Certification is completely free. It includes:
Validation of package consistency
Validation of metadata correctness
Validation of certification rules according to this document
An outcome of a successful certification is an APS Application Certificate of Compliance. The Certificate is a digitally signed XML document that is both machine- and human-readable.
We continue to work on improving and evolving the APS Application Certification criteria and process, therefore these Requirements are subject to change. In order to ensure that applications are up-to-date with the APS Application Certification Criteria, every certificate has a limited validity period. Vendors are encouraged to repeat the certification whenever the requirements are updated. The latest version of this document will always be available for download at APSstandard.com.
A Conformance Certificate is bound to a particular APS Package. In the case of a new version or where an update is issued, it should be certified separately.
This section lists the exact requirements
An application will be certified as Silver if it satisfies the following requirements:
The following requirements apply to any application packaged.
An application must be packaged according to the APS format specification. That is, every "MUST" and "SHOULD" requirements in specification text must be satisfied.
Package metadata must contain the URL of the application homepage
(application/homepage metadata element).
Package metadata must contain both the URL of the packager homepage
and complete packager name. An URL must resolve to a page with
content-type of either text/html or application/*-xml.
Package metadata must contain both the URL of the vendor homepage
and complete vendor name. An URL must resolve to a page with
content-type of either text/html or application/*-xml.
Package metadata must contain a default prefix for installation on domain
(application/default-prefix metadata element).
Package metadata must contain a one-sentence summary of application
(application/summary metadata element).
Package metadata must contain a one-paragraph description of application
(application/description metadata element).
Package metadata must contain an icon for the application
(application/icon/@path metadata element
must point to the icon in package). The icon should be of one of the following MIME types:
image/gif
(not animated)
image/jpeg
image/png
The image dimensions should be 64x64 pixels.
A package must contain text of the license agreement for the services aimed to be provided to end users
(application/license metadata element).
A package must contain a Product Code.
A package must contain a change log for the current version of application
(application/changelog metadata element).
The configuration script must allow installation, reconfiguration and de-installation of the application.
If the application needs a resource described in aspect (e.g. PHP or database), it must be declared by supplying aspect-specific requirement in the package metadata.
For each XML element localizable according to the format
requirements, there must be a language-neutral entry (i.e. an entry
without an xml:lang attribute).
The following requirements apply to the applications declaring use of PHP aspect.
A package must declare which versions of PHP are compatible with the application
(php:version requirement element).
The following requirements apply to the applications declaring use of ASP.NET aspect.
A package must declare which versions of ASP.NET are compatible with the application
(aspnet:version requirement element).
The following requirements apply to the applications declaring use of database aspect.
A package must declare a default name for each database
(db/default-name requirement element).
A package must declare a minimum compatible version of database server
for each database (db/server-min-version metadata attribute).
The following requirements apply to the applications declaring use of a web content aspect.
A package must declare an approximate size for each part in the web content
description (application/installed-size metadata element).
An application is certified as Gold if it satisfies the requirements of the Silver certification level and also satisfies the following additional requirements:
If an application is capable of sharing database(s) with other applications
by using table prefixes, this must be declared in the package by
db/can-use-tables-prefix requirement element.
If an application supports upgrades from previous versions this must be
declared in the package by application/upgrades
or application/upgradable-from elements and the
appropriate upgrade operation must be implemented in a configure script.
If an application supports updates from previous versions in patch mode,
this must be declared in the package by application/patches
or application/patchable-from elements.
A package must contain change log for all released versions of the
package (application/changelog metadata element).
A package must contain screenshots for the application
(application/screenshot metadata element).
Screenshots must be 640 pixels wide.
A package metadata must contain information about the languages
supported by the application (application/languages metadata element).
A package metadata must contain information about the categories the package belongs to
(application/categories metadata element).
The categories used must be as defined in
the APS Application Categories document.
A package must include settings for title and default locale of the service instance, name, password and email of the service user according to the specification.
Every declared service must have a summary information. An application and service summary should not contain line feed characters, and should not be longer than 256 UTF-16 characters (counting surrogate pairs for two chars).
An application description must not be longer than 1024 UTF-16 characters, and should not be shorter than 256 UTF-16 characters (counting surrogate pairs for two chars).
The actual content size immediately after service provision must not exceed the content size claimed by the application metadata (per section Section 3.1.5.1, “Content size”).
OS-dependent applications must require the environment needed
(/install/requirements/env:environment metadata element)
The Application Certification Request must contain at least one test case, and this test case must be passed in order for an application to be Gold certified.
This section contains the rules that are not yet part of the certification process. Consider these rules as best practices. Future versions of this document may include these rules in the Requirements section.
Application screenshots specified per Section 3.2.5, “Screenshots” of this document must not contain the browser frame.
| Revision History | ||
|---|---|---|
| Revision 1.1 | 18 April 2008 | |
|
| ||
| Revision 1.2 | 5 May 2008 | |
|
| ||
| Revision 1.3 | 12 May 2008 | |
|
| ||