XSL - XPATH Test Environment

Project Manager: Daniel Dardailler <danield@w3.org>
Author of this document: Klaus Birkenbihl

Created: 29 August 2002. Last updated: 29 August 2002.

Table of Content:

• Introduction
• Present state
• Deviation from plan

Introduction

The work is about a Validator for XSLT/XPATH and XSL-Fo.

For the time being there is a test suite for XSLT/XPATH and XSL-Fo provided by OASIS and NIST these environment give only limited help to the user in identifying errors cause every output must be checked manually (600 Tests for XSL-Fo) and there is no validator for XSLT/XPATH and XSL-Fo.

This project will implement a test environment that automatically checks the results of a transformation against the correct results.

The basic idea is like follows:

A testcase generator generates testcases for a transformation (e.g. XSLT or XSL).

• This testcase generator is controlled by:
  • an XML-Document defining kind and number of testcases to generate
  • an XML document with a collection of available transformation processors

  
  The testcase generator randomly generates a set of files containing the requested transformations.

• The files are applied to appropriate XML-Documents by the available processors. Each processor generates one result. The results are compared by a result checker that lists relevant differences and allows for a manual check in case the equivalence cannot be proved by machine.
  

In case that one of the processors has proven to generate correct output for certain testcases deviations from its output might indicate an error in a tested processor. But even if there is not such a reference processor differences might be used as a source for further investigation.

Present state

The work in this project first focusses on a test environment for XSLT processors. Though in general the Idea might also be applied on XSL as planned originally or on other transformation languages this was skipped for the moment due to lack of resources.

Due to late start of the project we presently are still working on the testcase generator. The main problems that have to be solved are:

• what is an appropriate vocabulary to define a set of tests
• how to define a set of appropriate input files to the transformation

Though there is an early prototype of the testcase generator these problems are not finally solved.

Deviations from plan

Late due administrative delay in signing subcontract.