D3.2.2 Conformance Testing Tools version 2
Summary:
The central objective of conformance testing is facilitating interoperability between various systems. Automated conformance testing is a major tool to catch syntactic errors in content before it gets delivered to the end user. It also has a place during the development of a specification. Examples, which are provided to illustrate specifications, are an important guidance for content providers and system developers and motivate them to take up the specification. Therefore, it is crucial that these examples have been tested for correctness. Conformance tests can be difficult to complete, in particular when specifications contain semantic real-world references that cannot be tested automatically. We need to allow for the fact, therefore, that automated conformance testing cannot always guarantee interoperability. Nevertheless, experience shows that not doing automated conformance tests considerably increases the likelihood of non-interoperability.
