ISO/IEC 15938 specifies a metadata system for describing multimedia content. This part of ISO/IEC 15938 specifies how tests can be designed to verify whether descriptions and description consuming terminals meet the specifications of parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 of ISO/IEC 15938. In this part of ISO/IEC 15938, the creation orextraction of descriptions from multimedia content is not addressed specifically. A system producing descriptions may be said to be an ISO/IEC 15938 compatible description production system if it produces descriptions (binary or textual) that conform to the specifications of parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 of ISO/IEC 15938.The characteristics of descriptions and the terminals consuming descriptions are defined for parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 of ISO/IEC 15938 as follows.- Descriptions: the characteristics of a specific description are defined according to syntax and semantics of elements from ISO/IEC 15938 that are used in the description.- Terminals: the characteristics of a terminal consuming a description are defined according to the required description decoding process for the elements used in the description. An example of adescription decoding property is the arithmetic accuracy in which the value of element are represented.The capabilities of a description consuming terminal are determined by the domain of descriptions and elements that the terminal is capable of decoding. A description can be decoded by a terminal if the elements of the description are within the subset of ISO/IEC 15938 specified for a given definition of decoder capabilities.In this document, procedures are described for testing conformance of descriptions and terminals according to the specifications of parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 of ISO/IEC 15938. Given a set of claimed characteristics (descriptions and terminals), the requirements for conformance are fully determined by parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 of ISO/IEC 15938. This part of ISO/IEC 15938 summarizes the requirements and defines how conformance can be tested. Guidelines are given on constructing tests to verify conformance of descriptions and terminals.This document provides additional guidelines on how to construct test suites for checking conformance of terminals. In addition, some test descriptions are provided.

First published as AS 15938.7-2004.