RE: [tag] Test Assertion Modeling - comments, etc

[stephen.green@systml.co.uk]

Serm asked:
>>>>>>> Could this be handled with profiles?

I'd guess not. A profile is a variation of the product being
standardized, not a variation of the way the standard is
defined for the same product. HTML for example wouldn't have
one profile for browser support and another for an HTML
editor and another for how XSLT might be used to convert it
to pdf. The whole point is to standardize the markup and maybe
include how a key app should handle it. I guess a standard is
best established by formally describing it then encouraging
and describing the primary application which would use it.
Other uses would be envisaged but not in detail since there
would need to be scope for innovative use or reuse built into
the way the standard is specified. I think 'levels' are just
a type of profile - one where there is some linear scale
linking the various profiles with scope for progressing from
one to another with more and more development/complexity.
I agree with David Marston's comment though
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/tag-comment/200708/msg00000.html
It describes the use of 'levels' and I agree that there is
scope to include this 'variability' in the profile - but not
to address the layers of which David Pawson speaks which are
the layers in the applications/business processes implementing
the standard/profile/level. Each level/profile has to address
each layer but the SBS tries to address all the layers in one go.
This means the conformance clause being vague enough to do so.
I don't think you can have one level (or profile) for each layer.
But you would probably need one version of a test requirement
and similarly one version of a test assertion (or set of them)
for a particular layer or range of layers in the applications
or for a particular type of application. Maybe there could one
conformance clause for each of these ranges of layers or types
of applications too.

-- 
Stephen Green

Partner
SystML, http://www.systml.co.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 117 9541606

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+22:37 .. and voice



Quoting Serm Kulvatunyou <serm@nist.gov>:

> ----------------
> Back to the SBS example though, I'm a little apprehensive about the way a
> necessarily vague conformance clause might impact on TAs. I guess there are
> all sorts of way of implementing a markup standard for instance (look at all
> the types of products which variously implement HTML, XHTML or docbook for
> example - browsers, XSLT apps, mappers, editors, pdf generators, office
> apps, etc) and each would perhaps need a different conformance clause and
> consequently different TA lists to test such conformance. Or the conformance
> could be defined just as schema validity and the products left on their own
> to work out how they should otherwise conform and produce TAs themselves
> with the potential loss of interoperability, etc. I'm a bit worried that a
> trend to make TAs as part of standard design might either be biased toward
> just the most obvious types of implementation and ignore future innovation
> and that it might therefore make conformance too specific and rigid with
> such applications in mind. Not a problem so much for APIs though where the
> conformance is almost exclusively a matter for applications and therefore
> TAs are more predictable and clear cut. Maybe this is a groundless concern
> though - after all XForms seems to be suited to its W3C test suite despite
> XForms being a markup language and not an API.
>
>>>>>>> Could this be handled with profiles?
>
>