Re: What is a subject of a test?

Shadi Abou-Zahra wrote:

> Finally, if we can not use such XPath-type expressions (for example if
> the page is not well formed [enough]), then the Subject probably has the
> be the URL of the page (i.e. we can not differentiate the location for
> the different instances).

E.g. HTML validation:
Test case: validates against referenced DTD
Two errors, test result is "fail".

Version 1:
- Assertion
   |- testCase: HTML 4.01 Strict
   |- subject: document URL
   |- result
      |- validity: fail
      |- message: image (line1:column1) lacks alt attribute
      |- message: image (line2:column2) lacks alt attribute

1b) with rdf:Seq for messages

Version 2:
- Assertion
   |- testCase: HTML 4.01 Strict
   |- subject: document URL
   |- result
      |- validity: fail
      |- message: image (line1:column1) lacks alt attribute
- Assertion
   |- testCase: HTML 4.01 Strict
   |- subject: document URL
   |- result
      |- validity: fail
      |- message: image (line2:column2) lacks alt attribute

Version 2 looks strange to me because the machine-processable 
information (testCase, subject, validity) are the same and only the 
(human-readable) message differs.

Would it be necessary for the EARL spec to clearly define how to do that 
in order to make interchange of EARL reports possible?

> So it seems that ideally the Subject is [something like] an XPath if the
> document is well formed, or a simple URL as a [compatible] fallback. The
> number of assertions which are generated depends on the test itself
> (because that could also effect confidence, error message, etc).

As said earlier, whether you can specify an XPath is not a matter of a 
document being well-formed. Well-formedness is a terminology of the XML 
world. An HTML document cannot be well-formed, because it is not XML. 
But it is possible to identify nodes with an XPath, because you can 
create a DOM document. What remains is if there are xpath-like ways for 
non-markup resources.

-- 
Johannes Koch - Competence Center BIKA
Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT.LIFE)
Schloss Birlinghoven, D-53757 Sankt Augustin, Germany
Phone: +49-2241-142628

Received on Thursday, 31 March 2005 08:21:25 UTC