W3C Architecture Domain

W3C XML Schema Test Collection

XML Schema Test Suite
Relaunched and expanded

The XML Schema Test Collection described in this page has now been superseded by a larger and reorganized XML Schema Test Suite. All the tests in the old Test Collection have now been integrated into the new Test Suite, as well as thousands of new tests of the XML Schema datatypes contributed by the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST).

This page has been left in place for historical reasons, but if you are interested in test cases for XML Schema processors, you should use the new test suite.

For information about the Test Suite, including information about how to browse it, how to download it, and how to contribute tests, consult its home page.

Henry S. Thompson, University of Edinburgh and W3C
Oriol Carbo, University of Edinburgh and W3C
16 January 2002

1.   Goals and Objectives

The W3C XML Schema Test Collection work aims at coordinating test suites for W3C XML Schema processors created by different developers.

Here are its main objectives:

  1. Integrate existing tests for W3C XML Schema processors in a common environment so they can be accessed publicly and shared among developers;
  2. Establish a standard approach to test material IPR which meets the needs of both contributors and users;
  3. Collect and develop tools to automate the execution and presentation of the test suites;
  4. Offer a standard description of tests related to W3C XML Schema processors:
    1. Define what areas of the W3C XML Schema specifications the test relates to;
    2. Specify whether or not a test is designed to identify any errors in schema(s) and/or instance;
    3. When errors are expected, identify them;
    4. Provide links to the part(s) of the W3C XML Schema specification tested;
    5. Facilitate automatic test processing and result presentation.
  5. (Test descriptions should be understandable by a developer without the need to actually view the test file(s) themselves);
  6. Offer a standard presentation of test results;
  7. Design additional tests and add/regularise descriptions of the existing tests;
  8. In due course, provide an XSLT-based approach to comparing XML representations of the post schema-validation infoset as produced by different processors. We will shortly announce the availability of XML Schemas for both the ordinary Infoset and the PSVInfoset;

2.   How to contribute

The W3C expects to author only a small part of the collection -- we are counting on Member organisations and others to contribute the majority.

To offer materials for the collection, please follow the procedure set out in the test materials license form.

3.   Current contents

The test master file, which is self-explanatory, is linked to all the contributions to date. A compressed archive is also available for download, covered by the W3C document licence.

Note that for the time being this archive contains only the test inputs and result summaries: the raw result files are being reorganised.

We are grateful to Microsoft and Sun for making early donations to the collection.