RE: XML: Lots of Questions

  • From: "Homme, James" <james.homme@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:28:21 -0500

Hi Richard,
I'll talk about what I want, and if you like, you can chime in.

This data pretty much represents the 16 Section 508 web accessibility 
requirements.

Each requirement consists of zero or more sub-requirements

Each requirement or sub-requirement has the following data pieces right now, 
and will include others as outlined below.

Note that I'm using the word requirement when I may mean sub-requirement.

CQ # (Rational tools will generate this)
CQ Type (feature, assumption, or supplemental specification)
Requirement (A short synopsis)
RequirementType (a rational field that indicates if it's something you do or 
something you verify)
Description (Further explains what the requirement is)
CQ Note (any additional comments that directly have to do with the requirement)
CQ Expected Results (What you expect to happen)
CQ Expected Results File (possibly a jpg, Word document, or something else that 
illustrates what the requirement will be like when fulfilled.)
Requirement Source(508, W3c, internal, and so on, but could be any of all of 
these)
Category(Usually usability, but could be something else)
Comments (Anything else that doesn't fit.

We also have this data that I want to capture.

Content on each accessibility testing tool that we can use to check for the 
requirement or sub-requirement.

That would include:

Tool name
Tool version number
How to use the tool to check for the particular requirement or sub-requirement.
Step-by-step procedure for testing.
How to tell if the test passed or failed.
Do I need to verify with a human or can I audomate this test?

I also want to have content for developers that might include:

Programming or mark-up language.
Code sample for addressing the requirement or sub-requirement.

At this point, I'm not sure what else developers would need.

Finally, a link to an internal discussion area where testers, developers, and 
users can discuss the particular requirement or sub-requirement.

Questions I want to answer with my data are:

Is this a 508 requirement, a W3C version 2 requirement, or an internal 
requirement, or some combination of the above?

Which tools do I need to satisfy a subset of requirements?

I also want to use the data to generate a chart or table of the requirements I 
fulfill, the ones I don't fulfill, and why to use as the basis for a voluntary 
product accessibility template document for audit purposes.

Mostly, though, I want to centralize the data, so that whatever needs to use it 
can do so and not worry that the data it uses is going to go out of date.

Now what do you think?

Jim



Jim Homme,
Usability Services,
Phone: 412-544-1810
Skype: jim.homme
Internal recipients,  Read my accessibility blog


-----Original Message-----
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of R Dinger
Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2010 11:53 AM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: XML: Lots of Questions

Hi Jim,

As usual, I will make a pitch for you to use Python for your xml processing, 
but first let me tell you about a project I am currently involved in that 
sounds similar to yours.

A friend has been doing some extensive analysis of chess openings and is 
preparing a huge text document of his results.  He wanted to display it as a 
web page, but was uncertain how to do it.

I suggested writing a parser to read and convert his hierarchical document 
into an xml format and then using one of the many Python library tools to 
convert that to html.

Converting his nearly 2 meg text file into xml took a while, but writing the 
tool to read that xml and produce the required html took only a couple of 
hours.  The library I used was the element tree library and I highly 
recommend you look into it as it works well for that application.  The 
library will also give an error if your document is ill formed.

AS to what sort of data to avoid, I don't know as xml seems to work well for 
anything that can be organized in combinations of sequences and hierarchies 
of levels.

Richard

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Homme, James" <james.homme@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2010 6:55 AM
Subject: Re: XML: Lots of Questions


Hi,
This question relates to when to use XML. Thanks for the previous answers. I 
just realized that I may not be able to do what I want to do because of some 
environmental limitations. I think that I'm going to probably end up using 
something like Perl to read my XML data and create my HTML pages. It's a 
long story, so I probably won't be using those tutorials. Anyway, here's my 
question.

What kinds of data structures should I avoid using XML for?

I'll start there, then get specific about what I want to do.

Thanks.

Jim

Jim Homme,
Usability Services,
Phone: 412-544-1810
Skype: jim.homme
Internal recipients,  Read my accessibility blog



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