draft How To Guide for Test Assertions

Hi All

 

The QA IG will be working with members of OASIS to develop a
How-to-Guide or Dummy's guide on Test Assertions.  This was discussed
during the QAIG meeting at Tech Plenary on Monday, 27 February.  The
work will conducted under both the W3C and OASIS banners (details on how
to do this are being ironed out), lead by Lynne Rosenthal (NIST) and
Jacques Durand (Fujitsu), and hopefully, with your help.  Please let us
know if you would like to participate in this effort.  It should be fun,
since it will be a practical guide, capturing experiences, and written
in a light, readable, style. 

 

 

The following is a summary of what we have in mind.  

 

A How to Guide for Test Assertions

This document is a guide to defining and creating test assertions for
specifications.  Its purpose is to help the reader understand what test
assertions are, why create them and most importantly, how to create
them.  As you will discover, there are no definitive definitions or ways
to create test assertions. Achieving a standard way to represent these
is not as important as being able to complement a specification with a
well defined set of test assertions that can be used later as a starting
point for a conformance test suite and that will provide invaluable
insights on the meaning of conformance for this specification.  The
activity of defining test assertions has also proved very beneficial in
helping tighten the loose ends of a specification, something that is
better done as early as possible in the standardization process.   We
will share with you our experiences in developing assertions, lessons
learned, tricks and tools we found helpful, hazards to avoid, and other
tidbits of knowledge that may be helpful in crafting test assertions.  

 

This document is organized to appeal to both the novice and those more
experienced in creating assertions.  The document presents basic
definitions, rationale for creating assertions, when to create them, and
the steps and principles to follow in order to create them.  Throughout
the document, we will provide examples and samples to illustrate what is
presented.  We hope that after using this guide, you will believe in the
benefits of test assertions and be ready and able to create your own. 

 

 

--Lynne