Re: Jena implementation report plans

On September 5, Jim Hendler writes:
> 
> At 3:29 PM +0100 9/4/03, Dave Reynolds wrote:
> 
> [snip]
> 
> >Approximately 10 test cases could be usefully reformulated this way.
> >
> >Possible responses to this comment include:
> >1. Modify some of test cases to this simple-conclusion style.
> >2. Augment the test cases by duplicates in this style.
> >3. Ignore it and leave the test cases as is.
> >
> >Dave
> 
> My preference would be 2 or 1 in that order - anything that makes it 
> easier for people to test implementations and to help them understnad 
> how to build tools seems like a good idea to me!

I am opposed to 2 and strongly opposed to 1.

My assumption is that the tests are intended to illustrate features of
the language and/or potential difficulties in implementation. Speaking
as an implementor, these kinds of "tricky" test are just what we need
- in fact we need more/harder tests of this kind. I don't see how
modifying tests to make them easier to pass is of any real help to
implementors - unless our intention is to fool people into believing
that it is easier to implement an OWL reasoner than is really the
case.

Even adding duplicate easier versions of tests seems to be
misguided. If we want to "encourage" implementors, we could simply add
lots of trivial tests that everyone can easily pass (just to be clear,
I am not suggesting this!). And where does this end - do we add
multiple versions of every test, each carefully tuned so that it can
be passed by a given implementation?

Ian



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Received on Sunday, 7 September 2003 04:32:18 UTC