4. Canonical Evidence

This section defines deterministic requirements for canonical serialization and evidence hashing.

4.1 Canonical Serialization Requirements

This standard does not mandate a specific serialization format. Implementations MAY use any structured data representation provided that canonicalization produces deterministic and reproducible outputs consistent with this section.

Canonical serialization MUST:

• Preserve field names and values without semantic alteration.
• Use a consistent character encoding.
• Apply deterministic ordering of object members.
• Exclude non-deterministic metadata unless explicitly defined by this standard.

Implementations MUST NOT introduce runtime-dependent, environment-dependent, or time-dependent fields into canonical evidence unless explicitly required by rule definitions.

4.2 Evidence Hash Derivation

Implementations MUST compute a collision-resistant hash of the canonical serialized evidence.

The resulting hash value MUST be reproducible across independent implementations when provided identical canonical evidence inputs.

The selected hash function MUST be disclosed in the Conformance Statement as specified in Section 4.

4.3 Deterministic Constraints

Canonical serialization and hash derivation procedures MUST produce identical outputs when executed in independent environments using identical inputs.

Any deviation from deterministic serialization requirements renders the resulting conformity artifact non-conformant with this standard.