Improving reusability in TTCN-3 test systems: A framework-based solution: Master's thesis

Quality of software products is greatly dependent on the testing process. Contemporary software products are increasingly complex, which addresses an additional challenge in testing. The academia and industry have introduced a number of testing tools, process models, test-specific languages and other technologies, that aim to reduce the time and cost spent in testing. TTCN-3 is an emerging technology for test specification and definition, that allows testing of reactive systems over a variety of communication interfaces. In addition to TTCN-3 test definitions, the test systems require certain component implementations in order to assemble a working test system. This work focuses on TTCN-3 test systems. The current test systems provide no support for easy adaptation of test system components, and they typically couple all required adapters and codecs in a single entity. To overcome the limitations of current TTCN-3 test systems, the system structure was further refined and a component framework was developed for test system components. Theoretical basis for the framework was taken from the systematic software reuse theory. This includes the software reuse factor in product-line architectures, component-based and object-oriented reuse techniques, and framework technology. Constructive research method was used in this work, and a component framework was produced in order to increase flexibility and improve reusability in a TTCN-3 test system. Unrelated test system components were decoupled from each other, and they were supported by descriptors, that were mapped to TTCN-3 interface calls at run-time. This resulted in a system, where multiple test adapters and codecs were supported, and the implementations of test system components were chosen at run-time. Usage of the framework reduces implementation work by enabling reusability within the test system. Disadvantages with the framework include the additional building work of individual components that act as the framework clients. Also, the development of framework clients included a descriptor file development for each component.