A knowledge-based method for validating specifications including open parts

SET is a credit payment protocol on the Internet. The SET specification has open parts in order to flexibly cope with various users´ business requirements (BRs). Security requirement (SR) is also a kind of business requirement. Due to such open parts of the SET specification, the currently provided compliance test is not sufficient for assuring interoperability, though this test can verify whether the implementation of products complies with the SET specification. The whole specifications of BRs are confidential. Even the parts of these specifications are initially unknown. They have to be gradually cleared, added and corrected during testing or validating the specification such as the SET specification having open parts related to the above specifications of BRs. By representing the error-related parts of BR specifications as knowledge and by incorporating it as the knowledge base of a prototype system, such prototype system can be rapidly generated and flexibly modified. By adding this prototype system to the common test bed for compliance tests and refining its knowledge base using the results of the interoperability test of each new product, the validation of specifications such as the SET specification having open parts became possible without exhaustive test of interoperability