testability of POWDER requirements such as "3.3.4 Compact"

I see requirements like...

"It must be possible to express DRs in a compact form."
 -- http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/NOTE-powder-use-cases-20070525/#reqs

It seems to me that "compact" is in the eye of the beholder.
I much prefer requirements to be objective/testable;
this is the consensus of, for example, the wikipedia
community:

 "Most requirements should be testable."
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requirement#Testability


Please consider either making 3.3.4 Compact
more quantified/objective/testable
or giving it some other label than "requirement"; for SPARQL,
we called them "design objectives".
http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-dawg-uc/#dobj
In OWL, they were called "Goals".
http://www.w3.org/TR/webont-req/#section-goals


p.s. FYI, I shared this advice in the ESW wiki, and it
seems to be standing up to the test of wiki consensus there...

"Requirements should be objective and testable. This is not to say that
things that are not testable have no place; the design goals of XML 1.0
were an important part of the consensus process. But design goals,
objectives and the like should be clearly distinguished from testable,
objective requirements."
http://esw.w3.org/topic/RequirementsDocument


-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Friday, 15 June 2007 15:08:57 UTC