The XML TS is a set of discrete tests for the Extensible Markup Language Recommendation (Second Edition).

Conformance tests can be used by developers, content creators, and users alike to increase their level of confidence in product quality. In circumstances where interoperability is necessary, these tests can also be used to determine that differing implementations support the same set of features. The level of quality of the XML TS is complemented by W3C and NIST's concern in test reliability and coverage.

The XML W3C Conformance Test Suite has been augmented to reflect the current work of the W3C XML Core Working Group. The XML TS now incudes testcases for Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Third Edition), Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.1 (First Edition) and Namespaces in XML 1.1

No. There are several reasons for this.

• The goal of the test suite is to cover most aspects of the XML specification, although It seems impossible, or or at least very hard to cover every conceivable aspect.
• Given that the XML TS is comprehensive, not complete, it is not possible to claim conformance with the specification itself, since there is no guarantee that all facets have been thorougly tested. Instead, conformance can only be claimed with the XML TS itself.
• The XML TS can tell you that your implementation does not support the XML specification, by failing to pass a test, but it cannot tell you that it does, even when passing all tests.

However, we believe that the support given by the XML TS is substantial and helps implementors to significantly increase the support for XML in their implementations.

Your first point of getting information should be the FAQ you are reading now. More questions can be posted to the public XML TS mailing list public-xml-testsuite@w3.org. To subscribe, send mail to www-xml-ts-request@w3.org with the subject "subscribe". Please read this FAQ before posting any questions.

Read the information up on the Web site, and send email to public-xml-testsuite@w3.org.

The copyright statement you will be asked to accept if you want to submit tests is:

The Contributor hereby grants to the W3C, a perpetual, nonexclusive, royalty-free, world-wide right and license under any Contributor copyrights in this contribution to copy, publish and distribute the contribution under the W3C Software License (19980720), as well as a right and license of the same scope to any derivative works prepared by the W3C and based on, or incorporating all or part of the contribution.

The Contributor vouches that she/he has all rights necessary to contribute the Materials in a way that does not violate copyright, patent, and trademark rights; contractual obligations, or libel regulations.

Contributor further agrees that any derivative works of this contribution prepared by the W3C shalll be solely owned by the W3C. The Contributor agrees that all contributed Materials when published or otherwise distributed by the W3C will be governed by the W3C Software License (19980720).

W3C will retain attribution of authorship to the Contributor. Whenever modifications are made to the Materials, this fact, and the nature of the modifications, will be clearly signalled in the distributed version thereof. The W3C makes no a-priori commitment to support or distribute contributions.

To send a test to the XML TS, send a mail with the test attached to public-xml-testsuite@w3.org.

The test will be put in the W3C CVS, which is publically available, by the XML Test Moderator. Issues regarding the test, eg. whether the test is correct, whether it is needed in the test suite and so forth, will be dealt with in the W3C XML Working Group and should be submitted using the XML TS mailing list.

The XML TS will consist of a series of tests, together with the test framework and an XSL transformation that generates the test report. Each test collection is submitted with an XML description file that contains a pointer to the individual test in the appropriate category. These files will be available from the main XML TS page.