Clarify relationship with OSCAL

[ralphbean]

I've been diving around docs today learning about OSCAL, gemara, and baseline - and one thing isn't clear to me: What's the relationship between OSCAL and gemara? Why create gemara when OSCAL has been around for years?

My hunch is that it's simply about simplicity. OSCAL is complicated. gemara is attractive because its easier to work with and at the end of the day you can translate your gemara files to OSCAL for export if a consumer needs that.

• Is that hunch correct?
• If it is, is it worthwhile clarifying that in the docs somehow?

A separate, larger topic, I know that the baseline files (expressed in gemara layer 2) can be exported as an OSCAL catalog using tools in the baseline repo. Does there exist a well-defined process for mapping between each of the gemara layers and each of the OSCAL models generally? (Do the project maintainers intend for such a thing to be possible even if its not yet well-defined at this time?)

[eddie-knight]

Hey, yes you're right about your hunch, and you're right that there are lots of gaps remaining on user-facing docs!

There is still a lot of housekeeping to be done as we bring Gemara into maturity, including decommissioning this repo (SCI).

Since Gemara is not designed to be competitive with OSCAL, any documentation or tooling to help with bridging the two is welcome.

[jpower432]

Happy to help create or contribute this documentation! I have started working on a project that translates some of the Gemara layers to OSCAL models to identify some of the schema gaps that might hinder the export. I can share something here soon!

[xee5ch]

Happy to help create or contribute this documentation! I have started working on a project that translates some of the Gemara layers to OSCAL models to identify some of the schema gaps that might hinder the export. I can share something here soon!

It would be interesting to see, but at a higher level: is 1:1 translation Gemara<>OSCAL a goal for this project? Partial translation a goal for this project? A goal for you?

The OSCAL models seem stuck in time so to speak so I am curious if that is a goal and for whom. Thanks for your efforts on gemara so far, it seems cool!

[jpower432]

It would be interesting to see, but at a higher level: is 1:1 translation Gemara<>OSCAL a goal for this project? Partial translation a goal for this project? A goal for you?

My goal is partial translation - using gemara to generate well-formed OSCAL artifacts that can be used by tools in the OSCAL ecosystem.

Sharing some (very) early work - https://github.com/complytime/gemara2oscal. The goal for this particular codebase is compatibilty with the OSCAL aritfacts produced/consumed by tools in the OSCAL-Compass ecosystem.