Improving conformance and interoperability testing

m The increase in distributed applications and the need for information-sharing has led to increased demand for information-exchange standards to define the means by which applications can communicate. Although testing is critical to ensuring interoperable products, it does add time and cost to the development process. This article reviews work in progress on testing for the STEP standard that promises to reduce the cost of developing standards and standards-based products. An investigation of common approaches to test suite development and testing methods leads to some insights on ways to improve the overall process. Development time and cost can actually be reduced by better applying testing methods and tools. oday’s computer software applications are becoming increasingly distributed. Clientserver applications, distributed objectbased systems, World Wide Web applications, and agent systems all require applications that can exchange information. As applications become more distributed, the role of information-exchange standards, which are used to define a means by which two applications can share or exchange information, expands. The accelerating pace of technology change has dramatically increased the need for new standards and for changes in existing ones. It has also led to a demand for lower costs and a quicker delivery to market. Both of these trends place increased pressure on standards bodies to reduce the time and cost of development. A significant series of information-exchange standards, known as STEP (STandard for the Exchange of Product Model Data, officially ISO-10303 [STEP-1 1994]), is being explored and implemented by a number of major vendors. This standard is seen by many as the means by which several tiers of suppliers in various industries can electronically communicate product descriptions and their evolving changes over the product life-cycle. These descriptions may include mechanical, electrical, geometric, material, configuration, design, manufacturing, and analysis data. Early on, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Navy ManTech, CALS, and key prospective users of STEP, who wanted to speed up the progress of STEP products to market, funded activities to develop better methods and tools for conformance and interoperability testing. These testing programs have been active for nearly five years and many of the desired results have been achieved. This article describes the relationship between conformance and interoperability testing, particularly in the context of STEP development. It has become clear during our work that the choice of test method depends greatly on where one is in the product/market life-cycle and on the means and objectives of the developing organizations. The following sections begin with a broader standard-independent perspective, and then, using examples from our current work ✮ F E A T U R E A R T I C L E