some thoughts and comments from reading a month worth of messages

["Serm Kulvatunyou" <serm@nist.gov>]

I would like the recall the discussion I had with JD when we sketching the TA model. We didn't like the pre-test and post-test conditions because the antecedent and consequences encompasses more than just conditions as it could also be event and/or action. So we tried to make it general.  One of the reason we didn't want to go into the specific of separating the pre-condition, action, and event because one form could be written using another form and event and action may contain conditions. For example, the condition "the light is on" could be written as an event "the system turns the light on", so is this consequence a test affect or a post-condition or both. Given the recent version of the TA model, maybe we can clearly distinguish the test affect and post-condition in that 1) post-conditions indicate the state the IUT and/or environment need to be in in order to evaluate the test affect which leading to the pass/fail outcome. The post-condition may be empty, but if it is not it is a prerequisite the the test affect, i.e., if post-condition is not met the IUT cannot be evaluated to fail hence the outcome is "cannot be determined" (or "technical fail" may be is a common term used in IIC). 2) test affect is everything else beyond the post-condition that is necessary & sufficient for determining the "pass" or "fail" outcome. The point is we need more guideline.

 

There were some discussions about TA testability. There is a proposed TA defintion which implies that all TAs must be testable. It is common that some specification requirements are not testable or partially testable, does it mean that we need no TA for them?

 

I think we just use UML as non-normative for illustration and explanation. We don't want to deal with the issue to map UML to XML/marks up.

I think as far as spec dependency, it seems like if writing a TA for a specific specification, conformances to other dependent specs can be easily stated. However, if writing TA for something like a SID (standard integration deployment) profile, TA needs to be sort of cross-spec. In that case, a TA for SID may need to ref individual TA in each related spec.

 

I generally lik the Rationale for Test Assertion is by Patrick Curran but I think some workdings need to be revised. It can be used for motivation/background section of the TAG doc.

 

What is the definitive point of what is an implicit vs. explicit reference?

 

Concerning one of the Dave Pawson comments, I think the separation of the TA from MUST, SHOULD, MAY in the specification is the right statement. It is true that TA always indicate the MUST conditions, but I think we are making an argument that we want to separate TA from determining the level of conformance. That is what JD is saying is that regardless of MUST, SHOULD, MAY that is associated with the requirements in the spec, TA only indicates condition to determine whether the requirement is met.

 

It seems like the current annatomy of TA includes (in order of increasing formality/machine friendliness):
- Prose - normative for human consumption

- Pointer to specification - normative for human consumption and analysis

- TA Model - detail break down of TA components

 

- Serm