Dave Pawson <> wrote on 02/28/2009 02:59:25 AM:
>
> http://tr.im/gRUC
>
> Rick Jelliffe on Conformance, with a view on ODF.
> including:
> <quote>Conformance is hard. ISO standards have a constraint that only
> "verifiable" statements can be made in normative text: no airy fairy
> fluff. And I certainly belong to the camp that says that the clauses
> in IT standards (in particular document standards) should not only be
> "verifiable" but that they should be objectively and automatically
> verifiable in standard ways. </quote>
>
Certainly no disagreement with that. Normative statements must be
testable. And given a choice between something that requires manual/human
judgement to test and something that can be tested automatically, choose a
formulation that can be automated. And given a choice between something
that can be automated in a novel way (say an ad-hoc schema definition
language) versus something that can be automated using an existing
standard, e.g., a standardized schema definition language, then go with
the standard technique.
However, on the last point I think it is something we aspire to but not
always achieve. For example, OpenFormula has a NOW() spreadsheet function
that returns the current date and time. How, using standard techniques,
does automate a test of that? RAND() returns a random number. Verifying
correctness here is hard, even using non-traditional techniques. It is
inherently a probabilistic statement, not something you can prove or
disprove with absolute certainty.
-Rob
