The Static Analysis Results Interchange Format (SARIF) is an industry-standard JSON-based format designed for the output of static analysis tools. Approved as an OASIS standard (Version 2.1.0), SARIF provides a unified structure for sharing data produced by diverse security and code analysis engines. The project is supported by a broad coalition of industry contributors including Microsoft, GitHub, SonarSource, and others, aiming to simplify the integration and consumption of static analysis results across different development environments and security platforms.

SARIF facilitates the interoperability between various static analysis tools and the platforms that consume their findings. By adopting a standardized JSON schema, SARIF ensures that tool outputs can be consistently interpreted, parsed, and displayed regardless of the underlying analysis engine. This standardization eliminates the need for tool-specific integrations and allows developers to maintain a consistent security monitoring workflow throughout the software development lifecycle.

Some of the key features are:

• SDK Support: Offers robust object models and utilities in multiple programming languages, including C#, JavaScript, and Python, to facilitate seamless reading and writing of SARIF files.
• Multi-purpose Command Line Tools: Includes utilities for manipulating and managing SARIF data, as well as frameworks for creating new analysis tools that natively output the format.
• Comprehensive Viewer Extensions: Provides official extensions for Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code that display analysis results directly in the IDE with code location overlays and deep-linking capabilities.
• Validation Engine: A web-based validation service allows users to verify their SARIF files against official schema requirements and receive immediate feedback on file integrity.
• Extensive Converter Library: Provides resources to translate legacy outputs from various third-party static analysis tools into the standardized SARIF format.
• React Component Support: Includes a web-ready React component to build custom visualization interfaces for SARIF reports in web-based dashboards.

SARIF is utilized by developers and security engineers by integrating the format into their CI/CD pipelines. Static analysis tools generate results in the SARIF format, which are then either ingested by automated platforms—such as GitHub or Azure DevOps—or viewed by developers directly in their IDEs. The ecosystem provides libraries that assist in the creation of converters, enabling legacy tools to output data that conforms to the SARIF standard, thereby centralizing security data management.

Some common use cases include:

• CI/CD Integration: Automatically uploading static analysis results into security dashboards in GitHub or Azure DevOps for centralized tracking and remediation.
• Cross-Tool Reporting: Consolidating findings from multiple disparate static analysis tools into a single, unified security report for an entire application portfolio.
• IDE-Based Remediation: Enabling developers to view security vulnerabilities directly within Visual Studio or VS Code with highlighted code locations and actionable metadata.
• Custom Security Tooling: Building proprietary security scanning tools that output data in a format compatible with existing enterprise analysis platforms.