Markup languages for test specification

I took an action at the F2F to chase up markup languages for test 
specification. I had vaguely recalled hearing something that NIST was 
working on. Today in my searches, I quickly stumbled on the DOM test suite 
markup language that Dimitris and others spoke of at the ERT/PF F2F at the 
tech plenary last February.

Here is a bit about it in the FAQ.
http://www.w3.org/DOM/Test/Documents/DOMTSFAQ.html#usingXML

Here's a message from Dimitris from May
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-dom-ts/2001May/0067.html
that includes a DTD
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-dom-ts/2001May/att-0067/01-methods.dtd

He attended an ERT call on 28 May 2001
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-er-ig/2001May/0094.html

I didn't catch it before, but now I realize how the DOM TS ML and EARL 
compliment each other.  Charles saw it when he said, "CMN Difference is 
instead of generating "pass or fail" you are generating EARL." during the 
28 May telecon.


A wider search brought up the following abstracts.
TTCN-3 - A new Test Specification Language for Black-Box Testing of 
Distributed Systems.
http://www.itm.mu-luebeck.de/english/publications/Abstract_ttcn-3.html
Towards the new Test Specification and Implementation Language 'TelCom TSL'
http://iamwww.unibe.ch/~rvswww/Publikationen/Grabowski/GI-ITG-1995/abstract. 
html
And a paper: 
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/cache/papers2/cs/16526/http:zSzzSzwww.itm.mu-lueb 
eck.dezSzpublicationszSzttcn3zSzGrabowski.pdf/grabowski00ttcn.pdf

Test Specification DTD
This DTD defines the format for test specifiers which define component 
tests and can be executed by the Test Pattern Verifier.  It describes the 
tests as well as the results.  The end-to-end process is to verify 
components so that they may be certified and then made available through a 
component server.
http://ciips.ee.uwa.edu.au/Research/SCL/Docs.html
Part of the SCL Component Test Bed Specification 
http://xml.coverpages.org/scl.html

Interesting tangent: IMS has a language to report results of student 
assessments.  Another possible use case for EARL, although they are already 
using their own XML dialect.
http://www.imsproject.org/question/

"ADL, or the Assertion Definition Language, is a formal grammar for 
describing the behavior of interfaces. This very general concept can be 
applied to any interface for which the behavior can be described. The 
purpose of this grammar is two-fold. First, it permits the translation of 
the formal grammar into natural languages such as English and Japanese. 
Second, it permits the automatic translation of the formal grammar into 
tests that will evaluate the behavior of an implementation of the interface 
being described. "
http://adl.opengroup.org/

Found a variety of sites, books, etc. devoted to Web testing methods and 
definitions.  Investigating these further.

--wendy
--
wendy a chisholm
world wide web consortium
web accessibility initiative
seattle, wa usa
/--

Received on Monday, 8 October 2001 22:15:03 UTC