Having just wrapped up the release of TransparentRETS 1.2, I can tell you we completed and passed compliance testing for RETS versions 1.5 and 1.7. On top of this we have tested TransparentRETS 1.2 with a RETS servers from every major real estate server vendor in the U.S. I figured now would be the perfect time to discuss RETS compliance. More specifically why we as an industry need to get off of our ass and take serious look at the lack of compliance in the industry. Third parties and Realtors need to deal with the constant problems caused by non compliant servers on a daily basis when trying to retrieve IDX data.

Now before I go into details let me start off by saying I am a member of the RETS compliance workgroup and the group has been working to address many of my concerns. The compliance group of RETS can only do so much however and the MLS orginizations, Realtors, and Vendors need to make compliance a top priority for this problem to be resolved.

The compliance testing of today is flawed in a couple of regards. First when a compliance test is done, the server/client product is tested once to determine if it meets a set of tests that attempt to verify that the product is indeed doing everything in the manner defined by the RETS specification. This product test is version specific in two ways. First, you test against a specific version of the RETS specification and second you are testing a particular version of the product. The problem is the product version that is tested is often not the same product that is later rolled out to customers. This means that any new changes or bugs in the product may in fact not be compliant. The other issue in the current testing is one inherent in all testing and that is the test is only as complete as we as the testers make it.

Now that we know what the two large issues are with the current compliance testing method, let me say that the real problem is not in the actual testing. The real problem is in the implementation of these products and the overall lack of vendor attention to problems when found. In our recent round of testing, Transparent Technologies has seen RETS servers with undefined KeyFields, bad DMQL parsing, missing headers, incorrect headers, invalid responses, incorrect response formats, and even one vendor server that expects our client application to violate the HTTP RFC in order to get a valid response. These issues show a serious lack of attention to standards that needs to be addressed. It is up to the Realtors and in turn their MLS to work with vendors to address non compliant servers. Let me also clarify that not all vendors in the industry have taken this lackadaisical approach to standards, however on a whole this is a very serious industry issue.

Anyone who has ever talked to me about RETS and the real estate industry knows, I have been telling everyone that will listen that the industry needs much tougher compliance testing. I have been pushing for the RETS work group to start RETS “site audits” where the group works to compliance test live RETS servers from MLS organizations all over the country. This would provide a great step forward in making sure the current RETS servers being implemented are in fact RETS compliant. The real benefit to this is it will help Realtors ensure that they could take any standard compliant RETS client and connect to there local RETS server to view, search, and download listings. I am happy to say that Site Audits are being brought to the full RETS group for a discussion and hopefully a vote at the Miami meeting in December.

My intent in writing this article is to help bring attention to this issue to Realtors in hopes that they ask tough questions of their MLS to ensure the RETS server is in fact compliant. If the MLS or anyone with RETS access wants to test the server, the compliance checker can run by anyone. If you do not feel comfortable setting up and running the compliance test contact the RETS compliance group.