Re: Testable assertion tagging for W3C specifications

Alex Rousskov <rousskov@measurement-factory.com> wrote:
> It would be great if all specs were 100% testable, but I do not think
> it is possible in practice, regardless of the specs language. My
> belief is based on a simple fact that both black- and white-box
> testing techniques cannot achieve 100% coverage of a complex program
> implementing the specs.

Alex, by no means do I think that testable assertion tagging can solve all
problems with testing.  But my experience is that many of the specification
statements are made without thinking about how to verify these statements.
I think that markup in the xmlspec can help, though I am purposefully not
proposing a design yet.  It sounds like the QA WG has already been thinking
about this, and, indeed many already have experience in such techniques.

What I am worried about with the current thread is trying to solve too
much.  What I am looking for is some simple markup that we could add to the
xmlspec DTD/Schema that would make testing and verification better.  And it
would really be nice to have something in time for the XPath 2.0/XQuery
1.0/XSLT 2.0 specs,  IF we can do it in a way that does not slow down
progress.  In other words, I'm really just looking for some useful baby
steps right now.

-scott

Received on Monday, 6 May 2002 18:03:35 UTC