Re: RDF Core test driven development and QA Test Doc

Butting in a little in the hope of clarifying:

Jeremy Carroll wrote:

[...]

> 
> Test GL:
>  >> [[
>  >> Checkpoint 1.3. Analyze the structure of the specification, partition
>  >> it as appropriate, and determine and document the testing approach to
>  >> be used for the test suite as a whole and for each partition.
>  >> [Priority 1]
>  >> ]]
> 
> This checkpoint defines method - the testing approach is determined as a 
> result of analysing the specification.

Thats not what it says - it says analysing the *structure* of the 
specification.  You can know something of the structure without having 
the specification itself.

However, I am sympathetic to jj'c point that the wording of this 
checkpoint suggests (strictly it uses 'and' rather than 'by') it is 
defining a method and that may be inappropriate.

Perhaps Karl could clarify whether this checkpoint is intended to:

   - contrain the process by which a testing approach is defined

or

   - require that a testing approach is defined, but not constrain the 
means by which it is defined

I think jjc's understanding to be that it does the former and he objects 
to that.

I'm not clear what Karl's viewpoint is.  It might be his view that the 
requirement on method is vacuous and can be met trivially, in which case 
it could simply be dropped.

I wonder if the positions could be reconciled with wording like:


[[
Checkpoint 1.3. The testing approach to be used is documented.

NOTE:  A single uniform testing approach may not be appropriate for all 
aspects of a specification.  The testing approach may define different 
approaches for different aspects, for example, different approaches may 
be used for testing document syntax and for testing document processing. 
  The structure of a specification may give useful clues to the 
different kinds of tests that would be useful.
[Priority 1]
]]

This phrases the checkpoint as a condition that is either met or not, 
which seems appropriate given my notion of the meaning of 'checkpoint'. 
  The note is intended to convey helpful guidance to the reader.

> That might not be what the QAWG intends but that is what the current WD 
> and editors draft both say.
> 
> Neither RDF Core nor WebOnt did this.

Is there an argument that this is in fact exactly what RDFCore did?  We 
observed that our specs were structured into syntax and semantics and we 
defined a testing approach for syntactic tests and for entailment tests.

Brian

Received on Wednesday, 7 January 2004 08:47:35 UTC