Re: Looking for tips and help for an XKMS CR test suite

Hi Jose,
 
We have been involved in a number of testing efforts within W3C - I'll 
try to pass on some information on what we have done with these groups.
In almost all of the efforts, we have initially developed a process
document - 
It's been useful in identifying how the testing process is going to work
- 
In particular, in identifying ownership and copyright info on both
submitted 
materials, and published materials [1] [2] [3].  Typically, in these
efforts, we 
try to put together a test description dtd [4], or schema [5], that both
describes 
the test and gives enough information about the test to put the
processor in 
the proper mode to run the test - ie, valid/invalid, entities,
whitespace, etc.
Running the tests and reporting the results is typically an exercise
left to the 
user :-).  The WG's that have used this process to exit CR have required

companies to run the tests and report back their results in a predefined

format, which is also defined in the test description file.  Then it is
relatively 
straight-forward to come up with a transformation to display the results
in a 
color-coded table.
 
You might also want to check out the way that the DOM Test Suite [6] was
put 
together, particularly if you are interested in testing multiple
bindings.  Here, 
we developed a DOM Test Suite Markup Language, developed tests in this 
language, and used transformations to convert them to specific bindings.

Here, instead of using a common test description language, the tests
were 
written to fit in with JUnit and JSUnit testing frameworks.  The test
are run, 
typically by Curt Arnold, and he brings problems forth to the WG.
Although 
it can be done this way, it is very labor intensive, and sometimes bugs
are 
overlooked.
 
I hope this helps - if you have further questions, I'll do my best to
answer 
them.
 
Mary Brady
NIST
 
[1] http://www.w3.org/2002/06/DOMConformanceTS-Process-20020627
[2] http://www.w3.org/XML/Test/XMLConformanceTS-Process-20031210.html
[3]
http://xw2k.sdct.itl.nist.gov/tonyc/xmlschema2004-01-14/XMLSchemaTS-Proc
ess.html
[4] http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/TestSuite/tools/testsuite.dtd
[5]
http://xw2k.sdct.itl.nist.gov/tonyc/xmlschema2004-01-14/AnnotatedTSSchem
a.xsd
[6] http://www.w3.org/DOM/Test/