Software verification and functional testing with XML documentation

Continuous testing is an important aspect of achieving quality during rapid software development. By making the user documentation for a software product into part of its testing machinery, we can leverage each to benefit the other. The documentation itself can be automatically tested and kept in a state of synchronization with the software. Conversely, if the documentation can be machine interpreted, evaluation of the software´s adherence to this description simultaneously verifies the documentation and serves as a functional test of the software. This paper presents an application of these ideas to a real project, the manual for Jess, the Java Expert System Shell. The Jess manual is rich in machine-interpretable information and is used in several distinct modes within Jess´ extensive functional and unit test suites. The effort to maintain the accuracy and completeness of Jess´s documentation has dropped significantly since this method was put in place.