Thanks Eric – we will look into these, and do fixes in next version.
-jacques
From: Eric Johnson [mailto:eric@tibco.com]
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2011 9:44 AM
To: tag-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [tag-comment] Minor items on the testassertionsmodel-1.0-cs-01.pdf
The SCA Assembly TC was asked to consider endorsing this model, which got me looking at it.
Then, a separate question came up in the SCA Bindings TC, which led to this:
1) Normative reference item
Normative reference to the ISO/IEC directives was new to me, so I wanted to track them down, but there's no link from this spec.
At a minimum, this should link to the organization from which I am expected to get this document, but it appears that I can retrieve the document from one of the following:
http://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink?func=ll&objId=4230456&objAction=browse&sort=subtype
http://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink?func=ll&objId=4230517&objAction=Open&nexturl=%2Flivelink%2Flivelink%3Ffunc%3Dll%26objId%3D4230456%26objAction%3Dbrowse%26sort%3Dsubtype
http://www.iso.org/iso/standards_development/processes_and_procedures/iso_iec_directives_and_iso_supplement.htm
Link, please?
2) Question on conformance
The question that came up in the bindings TC - is a test assertions document itself expected to have a conformance statement? That is, our TC has produced a test assertions document, but as it happens, we didn't put in a conformance statement (and are considering releasing it as simply a "note").
Would this be consistent with the model? I did a quick scan of the document, and could not tell.
3) Conformance section
Section five of the document references other parts of the document, but does not hyperlink to said parts. Makes the document harder to use (example "the TA model (Core TA parts)" - not actually the title of that section! My initial attempt to understand this reference by doing a "Copy" + "Find" failed.)
Other specifications that I've worked on at OASIS collect the normative assertions in a cross-linked table. Conformance section is then simply identifying which tables apply to which conformance targets. I find that quite useful.
It is also quite useful to name the conformance targets. So then the normative text can say "a test assertion language shall ...).
4) Introduction
Introduction uses bolded shall, however nothing in the conformance section references section 1 as being part of a conformance target. I also note that these assertions in the introduction appear to repeat in section 3.2.
5) These same assertions noted in #4
"These are terms familiar in an object oriented paradigm but shall not be strictly interpreted as object oriented terms."
and
"The use of the object oriented terminology shall not be taken to mean that the implementation is to be object oriented."
seem to be normative assertions where the conformance target is the reader of the document, and the use of "shall" seems suspect.
-Eric.