Conformance Tests for TTCN-3 Tools (ETSI STF 409)

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 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. A 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. Although there has been to this day no evidence of incorrect tool implementations, the TTCN-3 community has been repeatedly requesting over the past 10 years for some kind of assurance that tools comply to the TTCN-3 standards, i.e., a conformance test suite. This project is intended to create a first TTCN-3 conformance test suite for the purpose of ensuring that TTCN-3 tools actually comply to ETSI TTCN-3 standards.