15. A computer-readable medium for testing compliance of a computing system, the computer-readable medium being non-transitory and storing a set of computer instructions executable by a computerized device to cause the computerized device to at least: receive a collection of rules in a first set of markup-language statements, the collection of rules representing a configuration benchmark against which a computing system is to be tested for compliance, the computing system having interconnected components including different types of hardware components; parse the collection of rules to obtain test references to tests and comparison values used therein, the tests being defined in a second set of markup-language statements, with references to at least some of the interconnected components and their attributes as represented in a database organized as an object model of the computing system, the object model expressing physical and functional relationships among the interconnected components including the different types of hardware components; and invoke an interpreter with the test references and comparison values to perform the tests defined in the second set of markup-language statements using the comparison values, performance of the tests including the computerized device being caused to: access the database using the references to the at least some of the interconnected components and their attributes to obtain actual values of their attributes; and perform the tests to generate results based on comparisons of the actual values and corresponding ones of the comparison values, the results indicating whether the computing system is compliant with the configuration benchmark.
15. A computer-readable medium for testing compliance of a computing system, the computer-readable medium being non-transitory and storing a set of computer instructions executable by a computerized device to cause the computerized device to at least: receive a collection of rules in a first set of markup-language statements, the collection of rules representing a configuration benchmark against which a computing system is to be tested for compliance, the computing system having interconnected components including different types of hardware components; parse the collection of rules to obtain test references to tests and comparison values used therein, the tests being defined in a second set of markup-language statements, with references to at least some of the interconnected components and their attributes as represented in a database organized as an object model of the computing system, the object model expressing physical and functional relationships among the interconnected components including the different types of hardware components; and invoke an interpreter with the test references and comparison values to perform the tests defined in the second set of markup-language statements using the comparison values, performance of the tests including the computerized device being caused to: access the database using the references to the at least some of the interconnected components and their attributes to obtain actual values of their attributes; and perform the tests to generate results based on comparisons of the actual values and corresponding ones of the comparison values, the results indicating whether the computing system is compliant with the configuration benchmark. 16. The computer-readable medium of claim 15 , wherein the database provides a Representational State Transfer (REST) interface by which the actual values are obtained, and wherein the references to the at least some of the interconnected components and their attributes are embodied as structured uniform resource identifiers (URIs) defined in the REST interface for the at least some of the interconnected components and their attributes, the URIs being used in request messages of the REST interface, and the actual values being returned in corresponding response messages of the REST interface.