Digital Calibration Certificate (DCC)¶

A DCC is a calibration certificate as XML following the PTB schema — machine readable instead of typeset for the eye. calServer generates it from the calibration record and can display a foreign DCC in the browser without importing it.

This page describes both from a user's perspective: what a generated DCC contains, and how the viewer is used. The technical field mapping is documented under DCC export.

Optional module

The DCC export depends on the enable_dcc_plugin switch. Without it the action does not appear. The viewer is independent of it and always works.

What a generated DCC contains¶

Block	Content
Administrative data	Laboratory, customer, device with identification and serial number, order and certificate reference, timestamps
Measurement results	Per row the reference value, the measured value and the deviation as D-SI lists
Measurement uncertainty	Expanded uncertainty per row, stated for k = 2
Influence conditions	Temperature, humidity and pressure as single values
Recalibration date	The next due date, referring to ISO/IEC 17025 clause 7.8.4.3
Test procedure	The applied procedure run including its version

Measurement rows are grouped by their description; each group becomes a list in the document. If steps were edited after the procedure was loaded, the document carries a note about it.

The rendered PDF certificate can be embedded into the same file. The DCC is then one file that both humans and machines read, instead of two artefacts that can drift apart. If no PDF is available, the DCC is emitted as plain XML.

What deliberately is not in the DCC¶

The following is not included. It is not missing by accident but named explicitly, because silently omitted content is worse than known omissions:

Not included	Reason
Reference standards and traceability chain	Not emitted; traceability is documented in the certificate and in the standards table of the calibration
Conformity statement	The source field has no equivalent in the V2 data model, and it is not guessed
Second signatory	A calibration carries one performing technician, not two signature fields
Bilingual texts	Only `lang="de"` is emitted
Tolerance ranges of influence conditions	Each condition carries a single value, not a min/max band

Using the viewer¶

The DCC viewer (/v2/dcc-viewer) displays a DCC file as a readable calibration certificate. It is reached via View DCC in the certificate import or directly by URL; it has no menu entry, because it does not capture anything.

The file never leaves the machine

The viewer reads and checks the file entirely in the browser. There is no upload — neither to calServer nor to any third-party service. That is what makes it suitable for a certificate that is not meant to enter the stock at all: a complaint, a question, a look before taking it over.

Drop the file onto the area or select it — afterwards the status band sits at the top and the selected view below it.

Viewing a filed certificate¶

A certificate already in the system needs no file selection. A DCC in the DMS opens in the Preview tab of its document: the same viewer with status band, views and findings, instead of the notice that this file type has no preview (see document management). The same applies to a DCC entry in the review dialog of the certificate import.

A certificate is recognised by its content, not by the folder it sits in or its filename — what counts is the root element of the XML file. A DCC someone filed by hand in some other folder is therefore shown just the same; any other XML file keeps the usual preview with its download.

The three views¶

View	Shows
Certificate view	The content as a typeset calibration certificate
Explorer	The document tree, expandable
Raw view	The XML source

You can jump between the rendered view and the corresponding source line — whoever notices something in the certificate lands where it sits in the XML.

The status band¶

Above the view sits the check status with four levels:

Level	Meaning
No findings	The checks ran without objections
Notices present	Something is notable but not wrong
Problems found	The document is readable, but there are findings
File not processable	The file could not be read

Next to it are the schema version, the list of findings, the XML download and printing.

Checking runs in stages: first the protective limits of the file (size, nesting depth, dangerous constructs in the prolog), then well-formedness, then structure and schema version, then the model, and finally plausibility — date order, core fields, results and the coverage factor.

For the schema version the viewer knows three cases: a fully supported version, a not-yet-final release with a corresponding notice, and an unknown version rendered on a best-effort basis. Even in the last case it does not give up but states what it is going by.

What a statement carries¶

A statement in a DCC (dcc:statement) is more than its text. Norm, reference, date, period, validity, conformity, traceability and the responsible authority sit next to it as separate entries — the viewer shows them below the statement as label/value pairs. The same holds for a method (dcc:usedMethod), which carries norm, reference and link.

That is why the recalibration statement shows the date and not just the sentence in front of it.

What is still missing

If a statement carries measurement quantities of its own (dcc:data), those are not rendered — that would need a table inside the statement block. The coverage report lists the affected nodes; no content disappears unnoticed.

refTypes¶

refType is the machine-readable anchor in a DCC: how a receiver locates the measured value, the reference, the error. The schema prescribes no list for it; the authoritative one is the DKD thesaurus.

The viewer checks every identifier against it and knows three answers:

Status	Meaning
in the DKD thesaurus	The identifier is part of the authoritative vocabulary
declared in the document	The certificate explains it itself via `dcc:refTypeDefinitions`
unknown	Neither of the two — notice in the check band

The last case is a notice, not an error: the identifier stays visible and the rest of the certificate renders normally. It only says that a receiver cannot do anything with that anchor.

A certificate from calServer's own DCC export does not trigger this notice. If it does anyway, the identifier and the certificate belong in a ticket: either the viewer's vocabulary is out of date, or the export writes something it should not.

Multilingual certificates¶

If a DCC carries texts in several languages, the viewer offers a language switch. It lists the union of the used languages and those marked as mandatory — a mandatory language stays selectable even when the document does not list it among the used ones. It is marked with an asterisk.

If a translation for a text block is missing, the viewer shows the mandatory language and marks that visibly instead of leaving a gap.

Number and date formats follow the interface language of the signed-in user, not the language of the document.

Viewer interface is German only

The labels and finding texts of the viewer itself are currently available in German only. The content of the certificate is displayed in every language the document carries.