comments on test metadata

Dear Christophe, all,

 

I was wondering about the usefulness of "Preconditions" element as it
appears (if I am not missing something) both in TCDL and
http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/NOTE-test-metadata-20050914/#preconditions-def
<http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/NOTE-test-metadata-20050914/#preconditions-de
f>  (##any). In my opinion such an element to be more useful mostly to
tools and web UIs should contain one or more xlink:href to prerequisite
test case(s) (other TCDL instances). This also introduces an issue for a
URI allocation (some conventions) of test cases so we can refer to them.
Indeed, sometimes such an approach might not be applicable so a literal
element would be also necessary (have a "choice"). 

 

I was also thinking about baselines. I am confused about the relation
between "technicalSpec" and baselines. As far I understand technicalSpec
element includes technical specifications related to certain test and it
probably does not include all technologies might be used in a test file.
Then, "baseline" attribute can state that certain techspec is included
also in baseline or not... but what is our baseline and in what context?
Would it be useful to define explicitly in a meta file a "base" baseline
per test suite? Then the baseline attribute (technicalSpec) of a tcdl
instance could override that to offer a resulting explicit baseline of
the test case in a differential manner. Otherwise maybe a "baseline"
element could be introduced but this would cause a lot of repetition.

 

Just a few thoughts...

 

Best regards,

Vangelis

---------------------------------------------------------------
Evangelos Vlachogiannis
Researcher - PhD. Candidate
Contact: http://www.syros.aegean.gr/users/evlach/contactme.php
---------------------------------------------------------------