Open Security Controls Assessment Language OSCAL

OSCAL Metaschema Resources

This page provides resources for the OSCAL metaschema framework, which provides the modeling language and Java components used to generate and process OSCAL schemas and content across XML, Java, and YAML formats.

For more information, please visit the official NIST OSCAL page.

OSCAL Metaschema: 

An OSCAL metaschema is a format-agnostic modeling language and framework to define the data structures and models utilize metaschemas for the definition fields.

• Metaschema modeling language - a language developed by NIST, used to generate a schema for a corresponding information model in a format-specific serializable form (e.g., XML, JSON, YAML) expressed as an XML or JSON Schema. OSCAL Schemas are generated using Metaschema modeling language.
• Metaschema Java framework which provides:
  • Java objects for loading and working with XML-based Metaschema constructs. This functionality is provided by the Metaschema XML model.
  • Java bean code generation based on one or more Metaschema using Maven. This functionality is provided by the Metaschema Maven plugin.
  • A Java parser for reading and writing XML, JSON, or YAML into Java beans generated by the Metaschema Java framework. This functionality is provided by the Metaschema Java Binding Parser.
  • XML and JSON schema generation based on a Metaschema provided by Metaschema Schema Generator.