EARL Semantics and Queryability [was: Re: EARL-producing testing tool]

> Hmm... I've changed it to produce that for now, but I'm
> not sure I understand what this new and improved URI is
> supposed to represent.  Does this mean that I have to make
> my own namespace so that this can be translated into
> something meaningful later?

The main thing we're after is consistent information that can be
queried useful in future. The more consistent your information, the
more useful it is. Imagine the following report:-

<http://www.w3.org/blargh> rdf:type earl:WebContent;
   earl:date "2001-10-15" .
<http://www.w3.org/blargh> earl:fails :MyTest.

and then a couple of days later, another report:-

<http://www.w3.org/blargh> rdf:type earl:WebContent;
   earl:date "2001-10-17" .
<http://www.w3.org/blargh> earl:passes :MyTest.

Now, how do you expect to query it to check whether the page has been
fixed, given that the URIs representing the resources are the same?
It's broken. The rule is: one URI, one resource. [People get votes,
URIs get resources!]

So you're putting the "thing" in your own namespace for a few reasons:
to separate it from other "things"; so that you can add data in the
future; so that your data will be consistent; so that people can query
it in the future; so that if you abandon or break it, you lessen the
impact.

> You should make "Learning EARL by Example" public,
> it's quite helpful.

Thanks - I'm glad that it's useful. BTW, the document is already
public:-

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-er-ig/2002Feb/att-0031/01-
0.95byExample

as are all emails and attachments sent to this list:-

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-er-ig/

and indeed every other W3C mailing list.

> > * http://hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu/~nadiah/tester/css.txt#1.1
> > has a dubious fragment, although it doesn't concern me too
> > much.
>
> Another place where I wasn't sure of the purpose of the
> resource.  I'm not sure what's supposed to be there.

Neither am I. It's an issue :-)

The W3C Quality Assurance group is chartered to investigate a test
point definition language. As long as such a framework is scaled up to
the Web, it should be possible to integrate it neatly with EARL.

As for the fragments, what you have there is a document that is in
your own temporary language. EARL 0.95 does not provide information
for identifying the type of a test case document. It does define a set
of classes whose semantics are left for future interpretation by the
group. One of these classes is the "TestCase" class, which has a
predicate testId relating it to a test case file. This allows one to
bundle a group of test case documents, test point specification,
levels, and exclusions together - for example: all of the WCAG 1.0
priority 1 checkpoints except for 2.1.

> Actually the script uses POST by default, but it accepts
> either.

Ah, that's alright then. Perhaps you could change the forms to GET, if
you think it's suitable to do so?

--
Kindest Regards,
Sean B. Palmer
@prefix : <http://purl.org/net/swn#> .
:Sean :homepage <http://purl.org/net/sbp/> .

Received on Thursday, 14 February 2002 22:30:44 UTC