© 2008 The Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium, Inc.
All rights reserved. Unless otherwise specified, no part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized otherwise in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, or posting on the internet or an intranet, without prior written permission. Permission can be requested from the address below.
The Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium, Inc.
4390 Chaffin Lane
McKinleyville
California 95519
United States of America
www.calconnect.org
This document incorporates by reference the CalConnect Intellectual Property Rights, Appropriate Usage, Trademarks and Disclaimer of Warranty for External (Public) Documents as located at
.
All documents included in the zip file for Meet CalConnect 2008 are considered part of CD 0812 and the public disclaimer included by reference above applies to all contents of the file.
Several organizations do testing for conformance purposes
This is usually against a small subset of operations and uses testing tools
The goal is to “pass certification”
Some groups do very large TEST-FESTs again with the goal of conformance testing
Typically limited to very specific test cases
At CalConnect, we test partner pairs, at face to face functions:
Specific test cases are outlined and documented
Testing typically done by developers
In some cases, the developers are the authors of the specifications being tested
They are able to find and often times fix existing problems onsite
Discussions with other developers are held
Even though they are testing a specification, the developers know their products
The ultimate goal is better interoperability across vendor implementations
As a protocol advances, our testing expands to accommodate the new specifications added to a protocol
For example, Scheduling was added to CalDAV in the latter part of 2007.
In 2008, we started testing vendor implementations of the specification
This allows the vendors to see in real time how their applications perform against other products
Seeing quickly what works or doesn’t work allows the authors of the specification to make changes that will encourage interoperability
Case in point —at the October 2008 Interoperability Testing Event, 8 servers and 4 clients held CalDAV testing and two of the clients supported CalDAV Scheduling
iSchedule is new in 2008
Still in the discussion mode
Not yet defined as a specification
The CalConnect Community enabled members to work together and actually have interoperability happening prior to a specification creation
In October, we tested implementations of the new “specification under development”
This is an example of vendors quickly rolling out software using a proposed new specification
In this case, it will lead to a specification that has a good chance of acceptance and interoperability
Any member or non-member may participate in a CalConnect Interoperability Test Event
Submit a registration application
Agreement to abide by the rules of the event
Payment of the appropriate fee.
Any member or non-member may attend
The same bullet points as above apply
CalConnect provides the location, Internet connectivity, testing documents, and food
Typically, a CalConnect member organization hosts the event
Participants provide details on how to access their servers and clients
Test suites and/or Test Matrices are used for testing
Partner testing pairs are set up and each pair tests using the testing documents
Participants document findings and deliver them to the Interoperability Testing Manager
Impromptu meetings are held during the event to allow participants to have adhoc discussions
This is often the first time people who have been testing together informally meet for the first time
Face to face testing has proven to be invaluable to participants
8 CalDAV Servers
4 CalDAV Clients
IBM / Microsoft iCalendar testing
CalConnect produces two documents several weeks after the Testing is completed
An
A Public document outlines what was tested and general observations but excludes actual references to vendor results
The Public documents are shared with Standards organizations to assist them with modifications and/or enhancements to the tested specifications.
Prior CalConnect Reports available back to July 2004:
Test suites are publicly available on the CalConnect website
Past Public reports can be downloaded and reviewed
A new Virtual Testing Lab is in Beta now
Once complete, external developers can use the Virtual Lab to further test their implementations
The site is a series of work areas:
User id request
Logon screen
Profile Setup
Create a Test or
Join a test event in progress
Report findings on a Wiki page
Complete the Virtual Testing Lab (VCITE)
We are currently working on an iCalendar validation tool that will reside on our website
The goal is that people can paste iCalendar streams into the tool and it will identify issues and validate that the text is structured correctly
Continued Interoperability testing on:
CalDAV Scheduling
CalDAV Security and Roles
iSchedule
Mobile Calendaring Testing