The W3C Quality Assurance Working Group has published a note on Test Metadata. According to the note,
To be truly useful, a test suite should consist of more than a simple collection of tests. Additional information is typically required to help users understand how to execute the tests and how to interpret the results. Much of this information should be provided in the test suite documentation but some is more appropriately provided in the form of metadata about the tests themselves. Well-defined metadata can help in:
- tracking tests during the development and review process
- filtering tests according to a variety of criteria (for example, whether or not they are applicable for a particular profile or optional feature)
- identifying the area of the specification that is tested by the tests
- constructing a test harness to automatically execute the tests
- formatting test results so that they are easily understood
Most test suites provided by W3C Working Groups make use of some form of metadata. However, the extent of metadata usage and the forms and syntax in which metadata elements are defined varies widely from Group to Group. This document defines a minimal set of metadata elements that have proved useful in practice and attempts to standardize their names, syntax, and usage. If the use of standard metadata elements is adopted within the W3C it is likely that standardized tools will be developed to facilitate the tasks listed above.