W3C Quality Assurance Activity Initiated

Lynne Rosenthal is the manger of the Standards and Conformance Testing Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Information Technology Laboratory. She is responsible for the development of software conformance test suites and test methods for promoting quality development and accelerating implementations and use of information technology. Ms. Rosenthal has developed conformance tests for several standards, including the VRML, CGM, PHIGS and IGES standards. Ms. Rosenthal serves as co-chair of the OASIS Conformance Technical Committee and the W3C Quality Assurance Interest Group.

Biography

Lofton Henderson is an independent contractor with long experience in computer graphics, and especially in Web graphics technologies - WebCGM and SVG. Prior to a 2-year tenure as Director of Advanced Graphics Development for Inso Corp., Lofton Henderson presided for 12 years over Henderson Software, Inc., specializing in CGM technology, products, and services. He has taught and lectured extensively on CGM and other computer graphics topics, and is co-author of the "The CGM Handbook" (Henderson and Mumford, Academic Press, 1993, 450 pp). During 15 years' participation on the ANSI and ISO graphics standards, he has had roles ranging from CGM document editor to Convenor of the ISO SC24/WG6 Metafiles Working Group. He made significant contributions to the definition of W3C REC-WebCGM, as well as major industry CGM profiles: ATA, PIP, J2008, and RIF. He is current Program Director and past chair of the CGM Open Consortium, as well as a member of W3C's SVG Working Group.

Abstract

In order for Web specifications to permit full interoperability and access to all, it is important that the quality of implementation be given as much attention as their development. Moreover, as the complexity of W3C specifications and their interdependencies increases, quality assurance becomes even more important to ensuring their acceptance and deployment in the market. To address these needs, the W3C initiated a new Quality Assurance (QA) Activity to address all aspects of the quality of the implementations of W3C specifications as well as the quality of the specifications produced by W3C. This session will introduce the audience to this new W3C Quality Assurance Activity by presenting the goals, scope objectives and expected deliverables of the activity and providing an overview and status report of the Activity's first meeting held November 2001.

Introduction

W3C creates the technical specifications regarded by the Web community at large as Web standards. In order for these standards to permit full interoperability and access to all, it is important that the quality of implementation be given as much attention as their development. Moreover, there continues to be a strong demand from the Web community (i.e., end users, Web agencies, organizations, software developers, etc.) for better support and better implementation of W3C specification in products. The QA Activity was initiated to address these demands and improve the quality of W3C specifications as well as their implementation. In particular, the Activity has a dual focus: (1) to solidify and extend current W3C quality practices regarding the specification publication process, validation tools, test suites, and test frameworks, and (2) to share with the Web community their understanding of issues related to ensuring and promoting quality, including conformance, certification and branding, education, funding models, and relationship with external organizations.

QA Activity Mission and Scope

conformance test framework test suites validation tools The overall mission of the QA ACtivity is to improve the quality of W3C specification implementation in the field. In order to achieve this, the QA activity will:

work on the quality of the specifications themselves, making sure that each specification has a conformance section, primer, is clear, unambiguous and testable, and maintains consistency between specifications,
promote the development of good validators, test tools, and harnesses for implementors and end user to use,
think ahead in terms of what additional steps could be taken to achieve this goal more efficiently through education, communication, liaisons, certification, etc.

The QA Activity will leverage existing efforts within the W3C and Web community to assemble test suites, produce validation tools and follow good QA practices. These efforts are captured in a QA Matrix of W3C Specifications (Please see , and serve as the basis for future work within the Activity. The work will be closely coordinated and integrated with all W3C Activities as well as coordinated with external efforts, such as those by OASIS and NIST .

Although the QA Activity is not attached to a particular W3C domain, it is a cross domain Activity that applies to all W3C Activities. The QA Activity will help the implementations of the W3C Recommendations by providing guidelines, best practices, and testing tools such as validators and test suites. The Activity will produce a test framework to facilitate and promote the development of testing tools and encourages the W3C Working Groups and/or third parties to produce validators and test suites. Additionally, the Activity will focus on the quality of documents produced at W3C, the consistency of these documents, and ensures levels of conformance are well defined in W3C Recommendations.

Structure of the Activity

The QA Activity consists of a Working Group and an Interest Group. The mission of the QA Working Group is to organize and unify the work done in W3C groups in building and designing test suites and validations tools. It also defines the terms of QA, using a glossary, a taxonomy file, and also creates “how-to” guidelines for building test suites. The Working Group will work on conformance testing methodology, on the quality of the W3C specifications with respect to conformance and clarity, and the tracking of issues related to specification ambiguity and evolution. The test development tools and test suites will be decentralized and done primarily in the W3C Working Groups with the QA Working Group monitoring the process to ensure consistency and timeliness. The main mission of the QA Interest Group is to have W3C, its membership and the Web community involved in QA at large share their understanding of the state of affairs related to quality assurance and conformance. The Interest Group represents the interests of software developers attempting to implement conformant products, notably those developers who did not participate in writing the applicable Recommendation. Although not a core activity, the Interest Group will work to promote the education and documentation related to good practices, testing methodology, and public awareness of resources for quality. Both Groups will work in cooperation with other W3C Working Groups as well as external organizations to foster communication and collaboration and to promote harmonization, reuse, and mutual recognition of testing tools and methodologies.

Status of the Activity

The QA Activity which was created in August, 2001and held its first face-to-face meeting in November 2001. The QA Activity Homepage provides the latest information about the Activity and its projects, including the latest news and related resources. The news includes updates of conformance activities and testing tools developed by W3C Working Groups as well as external organizations. One of the Activities current projects is the development of a Framework for building conformance test suites for W3C Recommendations. The Framework will address organizational, operational, and procedural guidelines for groups undertaking test suite development. Additional activities include discussions regarding certification, test contributions and intellectual property, and communication and collaboration between external organizations development conformance related products and the W3C. This Activity provides a forum for all of us to share our interests and perspectives on ensuring the high quality of technical specifications and implementations of those specifications.