Test Assertions Guidelines TC comments on SCA_Assembly_Test_Assertions_01.doc

["Stephen Green" <stephen.green@documentengineeringservices.com>]

To: Co-Chairs OASIS Service Component Architecture (SCA) / Assembly TC
From: OASIS Test Assertions Guidelines TC

OASIS Test Assertions Guidelines TC were happy, as invited, to review the
draft SCA Assembly TC document:

SCA_Assembly_Test_Assertions_01.doc

( http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/sca-assembly/200811/msg00053.html
  see also http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/tag/200811/msg00022.html ).

We would like to respond with the following comments.

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- The Test Assertions Guidelines are well implemented in this early set
of test assertions. The complexity is mimized without reducing the
expressiveness of the test assertions.

- It appears that the authors so far only needed a subset of the
recommended Prescription Level values (here: Mandatory, Preferred,
Permitted), as they make appropriate use of negative expressions in
Predicate instead. Will you follow this approach for the entire set of
SCA Assembly TAs? Let us know how you think of the notion of
prescription level and of their suggested values.

- The TA parts Definitions are reworded a bit from the original ones in
the TAG document. Be careful of subtle differences:

(1) prerequisite should be more precisely introduced as a boolean
expression that qualifies the target for this TA (meaning the TA does
NOT apply to this target if it fails the prereq)

(2) Predicate reads "The meat of the assertion - something that should
evaluate to true or false for the given target.", seems to relate to the
fact that the predicate 'should' be a boolean expression. It does
however allow a little confusion with the fact that the predicate, it
could be said, should evaluate to 'true' when the requirement to which
the test assertion relates is fulfilled. A short sentence relating the
way the test assertion and particularly its predicate relate to
requirement fulfilment might help to clarify this (taking into account
the value of prescription level and the way the predicate can itself include
the 'NOT' operator).
-----------------------------------

Best regards

Stephen D. Green

Document Engineering Services Ltd

Secretary OASIS Test Assertions Guidelines TC