Specialist Task Force 433:
Extension of Conformance tests for TTCN-3 tools

Who we are:

Team Leader: Stanca-Kaposta, Bogdan, Testing Technologies IST GmbH, stanca@testingtech.com
Team Members: Kovacs, Andras, Broadbit Slovakia, andras.kovacs@broadbit.com
Nikolay Pakulin, ISPRAS, npak@ispras.ru

What we do:

The purpose of this work is to continue the implementation of a TTCN-3 tool conformance test specification for TTCN-3 tools, started by STF 409, i.e., we specify ICS, test purposes and TTCN-3 tests for those aspects of the TTCN-3 core language standard, which are considered to be the most critical by the TTCN-3 community.

For more details, see our Terms of Reference

Why we do it:

Over the last 10 years TTCN-3 has become a significantly important testing technology with very high deployment at various ETSI member companies as well as other organizations internationally. With its uptake by 3GPP, OMA and the AUTOSAR (a consortium of car makers and OEM suppliers), its role in standardization is further growing. 3GPP is using TTCN-3 as the test specification language e.g. for IMS call control testing from Rel. 8 onward and. TC TISPAN is using TTCN-3 for NGN supplementary service and interworking test specification. TC INT is using TTCN-3 for automating IMS core network interoperability testing. TC ITS is using TTCN-3 to specify all its test suites under the EC mandate M/453. Since 2004 ETSI organizes an annual, international user conference where it collects feedback from the wide TTCN-3 user community. The first ETSI TTCN-3 tools Plugtest has been organized in 2009.

Significant number of TTCN-3 compilers are available on the market (at least 7 commercial tools and 2 internal tools of industrial ETSI members) that also indicate the high interest and use of the language. The TTCN-3 standards which provide the foundation for this testing technology, are however quite complex and encompass multiple hundreds of pages. Part 1 of the TTCN-3 series, the TTCN-3 core language, alone is estimated to contain on the order of 5,000 requirements. Over the past 10 years the TTCN-3 community has repeatedly requested by for some kind of assurance that tools conform to TTCN-3 standards. A standardized testing language such as TTCN-3 should lead by example, i.e., tools that check conformance of systems to standards should also be tested for their compliance to standard.

Based on these requests, TC MTS developed a first conformance test suite in STF 409 which lead to the discovery of 19 issues or ambiguities in the TTCN-3 standard 4.2.1 when covering about 1/3 of the clauses in the main standard with some tests. TTCN-3 is however a living language and has moved on to a new version. The STF requested in these terms of reference is intended to update and extend earlier work on TTCN-3 conformance test suite to ensure that ETSI TTCN-3 test suites will also in the future compile on multiple TTCN-3 tools. 

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