Re: XML Protocol specification conformance issues

Noah_Mendelsohn@lotus.com wrote:
> 
...
> I don't think our charter mandates a test suite.  To build a test suite,
> one would need to specify the characteristics of the endpoints.  

It sounds almost like you're thinking that a test suite would test an XMLP 
endpoint via its programming interface.  

Wouldn't a test suite test and endpoint by sending messages according to 
the specified XML Protocol and receiving and checking responses?


> Yes, it
> would be very useful for someone to do an additional specification called
> "Specification for a General Purpose XML Protocol Processor";  I think you
> 
> could implement a test suite for that.  I don't think it's necessarily the
> 
> job of our WG, nor should it be in our critical path to recommendation.
> 
> I do think we should aim for the "two interoperable implementations"
> standard suggested by our charter.  To do so, we would need to itemize
> features of our specification that we believe need testing (e.g. support
> of headers that are understood, support of headers that are not
> understood) and demonstrate at least two suitable pieces of software that
> compatibly implement these features in context and with reasonable
> generality.  For that specific purpose, I can see developing a test suite,
> 
> but it should not be a suite that is used to test yet other
> implementations for "conformance";  it should only be used to prove that
> we have done reasonable coverage testing of our specification.


Or are you saying that creating a concrete message-sending test suite
would be problematic?

Daniel
-- 
Daniel Barclay
Digital Focus
Daniel.Barclay@digitalfocus.com

Received on Wednesday, 18 April 2001 12:21:41 UTC