2016-05-04 Recommendation on API Proxy Tests for DefCore

At the Newton summit discussion about QA, DefCore, and interoperability testing the DefCore committee asked for clear direction about whether or not to use API tests that proxy through one service to use features of another service.

For example, there are tests in Tempest, used for DefCore compliance testing, that call a Nova API to test the “image list” capability. That is a feature of Glance, and should be tested using the Glance API directly. Testing through another service does not ensure that the Glance API stays consistent across releases, and locks the testable version of a feature to something that has been adopted by a project that did not implement the feature. So we all lose some ability for testing backwards-compatibility and the Glance team loses autonomy for defining their API.

For these reasons, the TC encourages the DefCore committee to avoid using tests that proxy through one service to exercise the features of another when considering trademark compliance and interoperability.

Some existing tests being used by DefCore are not compatible with this policy, and either need to be rewritten or replaced with new tests. Project teams should work with the DefCore committee to identify and fix those tests.