How do we test a specification?

Hi QA IG,

more and more often, I receive questions and/or comments from WGs  
about the testability of their specifications. It's quite interesting  
and shows part of the misunderstandings of what has to be done when  
testing a specification. I would like to know if you have ideas about  
the simple question of

     How do we test a specification?

Types of comment

     * Our language is defining semantics, then is not testable or we  
can't create a test to prove implementation.
     * Our language is defining a framework communications between  
services, then it's dependent on the service and not testable.


Do you have a set of guidelines to invite people to define the good  
questions for creating Test Cases?




Example:

I remember having this discussion about "blockquote", which is an  
element in HTML 4.01 to markup quotes in a text.  Some people told  
me, it's not testable, because you can't prove that the text inside  
the element is really a quote. I agree with that but I think it's the  
wrong question.
How do we prove that blockquote is implementable? (or useful).

My suggestion was to prove that it was possible to implement by  
creating for example a tool which extracts in HTML the quotes of a  
text and then gives the possibility of a quote service. Extracting  
the content of the quote and the attribute cite, is a kind of  
implementation of blockquote.

So you prove that the element is useful by showing that it's usable  
in the way it has been defined.



-- 
Karl Dubost - http://www.w3.org/People/karl/
W3C Conformance Manager
*** Be Strict To Be Cool ***

Received on Thursday, 27 October 2005 20:51:24 UTC