MUTAT - Developer information

MUTAT is a simple cgi script to demonstrate possible uses of EARL, and also use of RDF to configure an application. It is designed to help perform Quality Assurance evaluation tasks.

Using it

You can go straight to the demonstration page of the testing tool which has been updated to be more user-friendly.

You can also make a URI that calls it directly, such as http://www.w3.org/QA/Tools/MUTAT/bin/mutat?script_status=1&TEST_url=http://www.w3.org/QA/Tools/MUTAT/wcag.n3

About MUTAT

QA experts have come up with a variety of solutions to handle entry and retrieval of the data they need - sometimes little more than a paper and pencil. The idea behind MUTAT was to demonstrate automating the process for human-centered testing, and output the results in EARL. The script presents the user with a series of questions: first a page of fill-in information on their identity and testing environment, and then the actual tests. The tests can be formatted either as a single page of text-based questions and links or a succession of framed HTML pages, with form inputs for the results. Both the initial information questions and the test questions are configured using an RDF file. There is also a feature that allows filtering of test questions.

The script uses the Ginger Alliance's RDF n3 parser. @@Is that still a sensible decision?

Getting the Source Code

the code is available read-only, using the CVS server at W3C.

You can also browse the corresponding CVS repository with your favorite browser.

TODO

The files @@incomplete

mutat
A perl file that runs the mutat thing. Asks for a test file if called with no parameters. There are parameters to make it ask for info like tool etc (needs to be fixed to work for WCAG example), or to run the tests themselves.
EARL.pm
Some PERL that allows for the creation of XML/RDF, and some specific stuff for EARL. Needs commenting and documenting. Not sure that it is a great thing to stick with - guess it's fine for PERL programmers.
RDF/Notation3/*
The RDF N3 parser from the Ginger Alliance. It probably makes sense to replace this stuff over the medium term with an RDF/XML parser such as Redland.
RDFcloud.pm
some stuff for collecting RDF assertions.
RDFtest.pm
some stuff for querying RDF.
create
A PERL script that helps you to create a new set of tests. Unfortunately the key step, of adding an actual test case, seems not to work at the moment. And it is not clear to me how it interprets the other stuff.

The text file of tests

The text file is now in RDF. Namespace can be found here. Right now the script only accepts files in n3, but there are tools to convert between formats. The easiest way to figure out what's going on is to look at the example file wcag.n3 above for examples of all the features. There is also a script to help automate creation of test files. @@Check out script, documentation.

Features to play with:

ChangeLog


Valid XHTML 1.0!
Document created Date: 2002-04-22 by Nadia Heninger
Document moved to location Date: 2002-07-26 by Olivier Thereaux
Last modified $Date: 2008/01/14 15:55:07 $ by $Author: charles $

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