Additional resources for QA

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

Created: 27 August 2002. Last updated: 27 August 2002.

Table of Content:

• Introduction
• The Matrix and associated tools
• Deviation from plan

Introduction

The W3C Quality Assurance (QA) Activity has a dual focus:

• solidifying and extending current quality practices (specification publication process, existing validation tools, test suites, common test framework, etc.) and
• sharing our understanding for issues related to coordination, certification, education, funding, and tracking the quality of products and services related to W3C technologies.

QA is absolutely necessary in order to ensure interoperability and usability and also to have consistency between the specifications we produce.

To achieve these goals, we need tools and documents that are specifically developped or written for the W3C QA, but that will be usable by the W3C community as large.

This project consisted in:

• design a data-driven Matrix listing all the W3C specifications and their status wrt to QA development
• defining an XML format to mark-up the information
• providing a management tool to make it editable by more than one person online (we've decided to use our regular CVS based system for that).
• generating content from XSL stylesheets (XSLT) automatically and publishing the results on the websites: RSS feed, XHTML file, other format if needed.
• Optionnal: coordinate the update of the matrix with the release of W3C specifications, to have automatic updates.

Associated with the matrix, we will deliver a taxonomy document defining all fields covered by QA, ie.e which category tools, specifications, documents belong to. It's a tool that will help people working in the same area to have a common vocabulary and create a kind of ontology of the W3C QA work.

The Matrix and associated tools

The Matrix is a Web resource which gives information about the W3C specifications, it's a synthetic table with information useful for developpers of Test materials or products.

The source of the matrix is maintained in XML: TheMatrix.xml, which contains more information than the HTML version, automatically generated on the fly or on demand.

The HTML (XHTML in fact) output is produced with an XSL stylesheet : toMatrix.xsl.

First, let's look at the Matrix itself as it appears to the online users:

This is only an extraxt, the real Matrix is available online

Spec	Status	Validator	Test Suites	Related	Conformance section
SVG 1.0	rec	no		Accessibility Features of SVG SVG Conformance suite implementation status SVG Test Suite Manual
SVG 1.1	cr	no	no	Accessibility
SVG Mobile	cr	no	no	-
...	..	...	...	...	...

Semantic of XML elements and attributes

The document is encoded as an UTF-8 document.

The following elements have been designed:

matrix

The root element of the document. it can contain any number of spec element

spec

Defines an indivual W3C spec. it can contains uri, name, accronym, history, validator, ts, related, conf, imp

uri

defines an uri. This is used in spec, in conf, validator, ts. Ex: http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Test/Mobile/1.0/

name

defines the name of the specification itself. It's usually a long name. Ex: Resource Description Format

accronym

it usually defines the accronym version of the name of the specification Ex: RDF

history

contains one or more element status which describes the life of the spec.

status name="(rec|pr|cr|lcwd|wd|rfc)" uri="[uri]" date="[iso format]"

describes the last status of the specification and the history of all published version. The order is very important, the most recent MUST be at the begining of the liste. The XSL stylesheet use this first element to grab the status of the spec.

translist

contains a list of translations of the specification, made of trans

translang, uri, first, last

one element per translation, with language, uri and translator information

validator status="(yes|no)"

whether or not there is a content validator for the technology

ts origin="(w3c|out|no)"

whether or not there is a test suite for the technology

related

related info like errata, technique documents, made of info and text

info

information on the related info: uri and text

conf status="(yes|no)"

point to conformance section in the specification itself

imptime

time since first released

Example of XML markup for the Matrix:

The full version of the Matrix source in XML is available online.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet href="2002/06/toMatrix.xsl" type="application/xml"?>
<matrix>
<spec>
   <uri>http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/</uri>
   <name>Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.0 Specification</name>
   <accronym>SVG 1.0</accronym>
   <history>
      <status name="rec" uri="http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-SVG-20010904" date="2001-09-04"/>
   </history>
   <validator status="no"></validator>
   <ts origin="w3c">
      <uri>http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/Test/</uri>
   </ts>
   <related>
      <info>
         <uri>http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG-access/</uri>
         <text>Accessibility Features of SVG</text>
      </info>
      <info>
         <uri>http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/Test/BE-ImpStatus</uri>
         <text>SVG Conformance suite implementation status</text>
      </info>
      <info>
         <uri>http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/Test/svgTest-manual.htm</uri>
         <text>SVG Test Suite Manual</text>
      </info>
   </related>
   <conf>
      <uri>http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/conform.html</uri>
   </conf>
   <imptime>9m</imptime>
</spec>
  

XSLT Style Sheet

This complete style sheet processes the XML source above and renders it as XHTML.

This is a shorter version without Metadata, logo, copyright and CSS generation.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><xsl:stylesheet 
    xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
    xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" version="1.0">

<xsl:outputindent="yes" method="xml" omit-xml-declaration="no" encoding="utf-8"
    doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
   doctype-system="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"/>

<xsl:template match="*">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">

<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>W3C QA - The W3C Matrix</title>
</head>
<body>
 
<h1>The Matrix of <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/">W3C specifications</a>.</h1>
 
<div class="thematrix">
<table class="thematrix" border="1">
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <th>Spec</th>
      <th>Status</th>
     <!-- <th>QA Log</th>-->
      <th>Validator</th>
      <th>Test Suites</th>
      <th>Related</th>
      <th>Conformance section</th>
    </tr>

<xsl:apply-templates/>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>

</div>

<hr />
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="text()"/>

<xsl:template match="spec">
<tr>
  <th class="spec"><a href="{uri}"
        title="{name}"><xsl:value-of select="accronym"/></a></th>
  <td class="{history/status[1]/@name}"><xsl:value-of select="history/status[1]/@name"/></td>
  <!--<td class="Log"></td>-->
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="validator/@status='yes'">
<td class="Valid"><a href="{validator/uri}"><img
        src="http://www.w3.org/QA/images/icovalid" alt="Validator" /></a></td>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise><td class="Valid">no</td></xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>

<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="ts/@origin='w3c'">
<td class="TS"><a href="{ts/uri}"><img
        src="http://www.w3.org/Icons/WWW/w3c_home" style="height:1em" 
alt="W3C Test Suite" /></a></td>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="ts/@origin='out'">
<td class="TS"><a href="{ts/uri}"><img
        src="http://www.w3.org/QA/images/icots" alt="Test Suite" /></a></td>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise><td class="TS">no</td></xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>

<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="not(related/info/node())">
<td class="Info">-</td>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
  <td class="Info">
<ul>
<xsl:apply-templates select="related/info"/>
</ul>
</td>
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>

<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="conf/@status='no'">
<td class="Conf">no</td>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise><td class="conf"><a
        href="{conf/uri}"><img
        src="http://www.w3.org/QA/images/icoconf" alt="Conformance" /></a></td></xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</tr>

</xsl:template>


<xsl:template match="info">
<li><a href="{uri}"><xsl:value-of select="text"/></a></li>
</xsl:template>


</xsl:stylesheet>

Deviations from plan

None, work is done.

The Matrix is now an important tool of the W3C QA activity, used daily by a lot of WG participants.

It is continuously updated by the W3C staff to reflect the latest QA development in all W3C specifications.