"location-uuid" (Location Universally Unique Identifier Reference) is both a field and a flag in metadata metaschema. Is this a bug?

[RS-Credentive]

Question

While parsing Flags and Fields in oscal_metadata_metaschema.xml, I discovered that "location-uuid" is defined as both a field and a flag. This causes issues when generating code from the metaschema definition because the names conflict. Is this an intentional feature or a bug?

[RS-Credentive]

Having to account for identical names for instances of different types will make the specification more complex to create as code and use as a library. I'll add an Issue in the metaschema repo as well, since I guess it needs to be fixed there.

[iMichaela]

@RS-Credentive - Thank you for your question. The code you point to was inserted 3years 7 months ago by a team member no longer with us. I will need to research it with @wendellpiez before addressing it.

[RS-Credentive]

Good discussion of the theoretical issues over on usnistgov/metaschema#781, but for OSCAL specifically, I have noticed that location-uuid is defined as a field and a flag, but only the field reference is used, so it appears the flag definition could be eliminated without any impact to any other OSCAL model.

The field reference is here:

OSCAL/src/metaschema/oscal_metadata_metaschema.xml

Line 303 in 4f02dac

<field ref="location-uuid" max-occurs="unbounded">

I haven't seen any other reference to "location-uuid" except in the context of constraints.