Proposed refinement of section 4.8, with an example

["Jacques R. Durand" <JDurand@us.fujitsu.com>]

4.8 Conformance Statements

Predicates, like prerequisites, can use conformance statements in their expression. This is often needed

when refering to external specifications, as seen in the previous section about handling multiple specificaitons.

 

Conformance statements can be made abstractly without specifying the details of any test assertion that

might be involved in assessing this conformance:

Predicate: [the widget] conforms to the mini-widget specification

In the above case, it is assumed that a precise conformance clause exists that defines what it means to conform to

the mini-widget specification.

 

In other cases, the conformance statement may be defined based on an explicit set of test assertions that are combined

into a logical expression. The following Predicate expression is a logical composition of the outcomes of several test assertions:

Predicate: TA1 and TA2 and (TA3 or TA4)

This form of conformance statement may be appropriate for "properties" that can be complex and involve several test assertions.

Even the property defined in section 4.3 ("medium-size" widget) could be defined by such a predicate in a "conformance stating" test assertion. In the following, the test assertion widget-TA-mediumsize is asserting the conditions for a widget in order to qualify as medium-size:

TA id: widget-TA-mediumsize

Normative Source: specification requirement 104

Target: widget

Predicate: [the widget] satisfies widget-TA104-1 AND widget-TA104-2

Prescription Level: mandatory

When an entire set of test assertions has been defined for addressing a particular conformance profile, this test assertion set can be referred to in the Predicate, for example:

Predicate: Test Assertion Set (xyz)

where there is an implicit AND composition (a logical composition of all the test assertions in the test

assertion set).

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-jacques