RE: Comments on the new RDF Test Cases draft

At 12:43 29/05/2002 -0400, Massimo Marchiori wrote:

> > When I said no, I was thinking of parser tests, which in practise is what
> > people will be using the tests for.  I think I was wrong as the question
> > Massimo asked was not well formed.
> >
> > We are not defining any notion of compliance, so there is no
> > answer.  We do
> > say, that for a given test case, the input RDF/XML represents the same
> > graph as the supplied n-triples.  That is syntactic equivalence and that
> > seems right to me.  Notions of semantic equivalence can be kept separate.
> >
> > Sorry, Massimo; I was in too much of a hurry answering your mail
> > and failed to engage brain above first gear.
>
>Ok, that's a reasonable way out: don't give any conformance status to the 
>Test Cases.
>In this case, my suggestion is to smoothen the current language (which now can
>lead to think there's some normative conformance definition creeping in,
>i.e., defining normatively conformance of an "RDF parser").
>In particular, whereas now there are wordings like
>+ for positive tests:
><quote>
>A parser is considered to pass the test if it produces a graph isomorphic
>with the graph described by the N-triples output document.
></quote>
>+ for negative tests:
><quote>
>A parser is considered to pass the test if it correctly holds the input 
>document to be in error.
></quote>

That's a good point.  Jan - what do you think?


>more milder words can be used, for example using something like
>"the expected output of an RDF parser is a graph ... bla"
>which conveys the intuition that, reasonably, a parser should do what 
>stated here,
>but doesn't normatively try to impose some notion of "test passing" for parser
>(which leads to conformance, which leads to the syntactic/semantic issue, 
>and/or
>to a definition of what an RDF parser is....).
>For the negative tests, similar thing, like e.g., "the expected behaviour 
>of an RDF
>parser is to raise an error".
>
>Note the entailment part, on the other hand, does a good job to avoid the
>"conformance problem", as it writes rather neutrally:
><quote>
>the test succeeds if the entailment holds
></quote>
>(i.e., the "test" is made the subject of the sentence).
>
>Therefore, such "word smoothering", plus a precise definition of isomorphism,
>suffice. But, note that if we go along the "smoothering way", the same 
>problem of
>a precise definition of isomorphism can be nicely dropped as well, as the 
>wording can
>well say that the "expected output" is the given N-triple one, and just be
>silent on the isomorphism issues at all (as, it's rather clear that N-triple
>output is defined modulo renaming of blank nodes, and in any case, 
>crucially, no
>*formal* definition is then needed as the Test Cases contain clarification 
>guidelines,
>and not formal normative definition of "test passing for parsers").
>
>-M

Received on Thursday, 30 May 2002 12:41:50 UTC