Testing Approach Decision #1: What Classes of Products Are To Be Tested?

["Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamilton@acm.org>]

Here is a straw man for the first of the "First Wave of Decisions" item:
What Classes of Products are to be Tested?
David Marston's list is at 
<http://wiki.oasis-open.org/oic/TestingThoughts1/800_The_First_Wave_of_Decis
ions>.

In my response, I consider 

  1.1 Primary Product Class
  1.2 Secondary Document Formats
  1.3 Secondary Product Classes
  1.4 Cross-Version Interoperability

It might be useful, for discussion, to look over the four parts and then
zero in on 1.1, Primary Product Class.

 - Dennis 

-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis E. Hamilton [mailto:dennis.hamilton@acm.org] 
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/oic/200812/msg00025.html
Sent: Friday, December 19, 2008 21:44
To: oic@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [oic] The First Wave of Decisions: Trial Answers

In the OIC-TC Call on 2008-12-17, I said I would like to create a Wiki page
on the six questions on David Marston's list (below and on page 9 of his
slide set).  On second thought, I suggested we work on the list until we
have something closer that we might put on a Wiki page and refine over time.
Here are my tries at the six questions:

	1.	What Class(es) of Product are to be tested? 
	2.	How to deal with profiles, SHOULD statements, optionality,
etc. 
	3.	Will we write Test Assertions? 
	4.	How will we take contributions? 
	5.	What is the policy on approvals and challenges? 
	6.	Will there be a mix of manual and automatable test cases?

1. WHAT CLASSES OF PRODUCTS ARE TO BE TESTED?

1.1 PRIMARY PRODUCT CLASS

1.1.1 The primary class of products are office-productivity software
products for word processing, presentations, and spreadsheets.  The products
are typically implemented by free-standing software programs and components
of office-software suites.  The products may also operate via on-line
application services that interact with web browsers or specialty user
agents.

1.1.2 The products accept, manipulate, and produce one or more of the
individual OpenDocument Format document types and their templates for word
processing (OpenDocument Text), presentations (OpenDocument Presentation),
and spreadsheets (OpenDocument Spreadsheet).  


1.2 SECONDARY DOCUMENT FORMATS

There are also secondary document formats that may be supported by software
in the primary product class.  The interoperable use of these free-standing
formats are secondary.

1.2.1 Additional OpenDocument Format document types and corresponding
templates that may also be supported include drawings (OpenDocument
Drawing), charts (OpenDocument Chart), and images (OpenDocument Image),
although the primary product interest is in the occurrence of these forms as
part of the primary OpenDocument Format document types.  Not all of these
document types are known to be implemented.  

1.2.2 In addition, there are free-standing documents and templates for
Math-ML (OpenDocument Formula) and there is a special word-processing master
document (OpenDocument Global Text).  Starting with ODF 1.2 there is also a
database application for local and remote databases, using a document format
(OpenDocument Base).

1.3 SECONDARY PRODUCT CLASSES

1.3.1 A secondary product class that may be of some concern consists of
converters by which ODF documents are imported into programs that are not
designed to support ODF, with or without separate translation into another
format that is supported.  This precedes conversion in the other direction
because the OIC has more to say about what the appropriate interpretation of
ODF format is that what the appropriate interpretation of other formats
might be.  This can also apply in the case of processors that are designed
for earlier or later versions of the OpenDocument specification, their
feature sets, and breaking changes between the specification.

1.3.2 An additional secondary class would consist of converters by which
documents in other formats are converted to a corresponding ODF format.

1.3.3 It is assumed that there is no major concern for special-purpose
software that emit ODF documents using a subset of ODF features for a
specific application.  Likewise, applications that use special-purpose ODF
documents as a form of custom data input are not of primary or secondary
concern.

1.4 CROSS-VERSION INTEROPERABILITY

The primary class tends to involve implementations at the same level of ODF
Specification (e.g., one of 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, ... ).  There are also
cross-version interoperability challenges.

1.4.1 An important consideration for the primary class is the ability to
successfully deal with documents that were produced in accordance with a
different version of the OpenDocument Format standard, whether earlier or
later than the version for which the primary software is designed.  

1.4.2 The ability to exchange documents back-and-forth between different
implementations that provide primary/default support to the same or
different versions of the OpenDocument Format standard are also of concern.


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