While experts from the testing community shared their knowledge on TTCN-3,
the conference offered a platform to understand the potentials of testing
language in telecom and other verticals
The Testing & Test Control Notation User Conference Asia 2009, on test
specification language TTCN-3, was held in Bengaluru, from November 17-19, 2009,
in reflection of the huge interest shown in the region on this versatile and
powerful software language. The three-day conference organized jointly by the
European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and ISQT, a Bengaluru
based training and consultancy company specializing in software testing and test
automation, registered a huge success with the participants showing enthusiasm
in the tutorials and conferences that ensued in the second and thrid day,
respectively. The conference was inagurated by CP Gangadharaiah, senior VP &
global head, Wipro Testing Services; Prof Dieter Hogrefe, University of
Gottingen, DE; Arunkumar Khannur, chairman & CEO, ISQT; and Jayakishor Bhanja,
program committee chair, ETSI.
Khannur said, "Our overall objective is to bring awareness about what is
happening in the TTCN-3 testing language as only very few vendors have
understood the potentialilty of TTCN-3 in India. Wipro's understanding on the
TTCN-3 potentiality helped share the experience with practitioners here. With
the noble idea of spreading awarness, ETSI and Wipro decided to bring some
awareness on its potentiality. TTCN-3 is used very widely in teleocm. Most
people think that it is only for telecom, but it is much beyond that. ISQT
International wanted to bridge the knowledge gap among the practitioners through
this conference."
Interoperability
The main aim of global standardization is to enable interoperability in a
multi-vendor, multi-network, multi-service environment. With converging
technologies, ICT systems are becoming more and more complex. In his
presentation on 'Achieving Interoperable Standards: The ETSI Approach', Anthony
Wiles, director, Center for Testing and Interoperability, said, "We live in an
interconnected world and interoperability is the key to drive this forward. We
have not only traditional telecoms such as UMTS, LTE and IMS, but also new
developments that include digital homes, smart houses, and intelligent transport
systems. In many cases, the multiple standards that specify these technologies
are often delivered by different standard bodies. This leads to potential cases
of non-interoperability. ETSI believes that validation and testing are the key
tools to deliver interoperable standards and products." ETSI ensures
interoperability standards through specification, validation, and testing.
 |
| L to R: Jayakishor Bhanja, Wipro; CP
Gangadharaiah, senior VP & global head, Wipro Testing Services, Prof Dieter
Hogrefe, University of Gottingen, DE; Arunkumar Khannur, CEO & chairman,
ISQT, Organizing Chair |
In 2009 ETSI started an EC funded project to study the automation of
interoperability testing of distributed systems. Stephan Schulz, Theofanis
Vassiliou-Gioles in his presentation on 'Automated Interoperability Testing with
TTCN-3', said that interoperability testing is an accepted way to reduce
interoperability problems. Manual interoperability testing is time-consuming and
error prone, and therefore, expensive. Automation can reduce costs by more than
50% compared to manual validation.
He said that their testing approach is not limited to IMS testing only, but
it is broadly applicable. In the context of the project, concepts have been
developed taking other domains such as LTE, WiMax, TETRA, HL7, grid computing,
VoIP in air traffic control, etc, into account as well. In addition, this
approach is also suited for automation of interoperability testing beyond
standardization or interoperability events, for example in the context of
commercial development of distributed systems within the industry.
Automated Target Testing
On automated testing, Bhaskar Rao G of Motorola said that the TTCN-3
approach is flexible to adopt to various features and testing of components
independently. Automation of TTCN-3 test system components and reuse of
framework across test phases are possible with TTCN-3. It offers markable
reduction in time-to-market, and higher productivity. Gaining experiences from
WiMax call processing features, he said that other benefits of TTCN-3 like
standard language for testing, ability to handle configuration, execution and
tracing of test case execution are sure to attract the testing community.
In his presentation on 'TTCN-3 in Wireless Testing EcoSpace', Siddharth
Prasad, associate manager, APSS, Accenture Product Software Solutions, focused
around typical challenges in developing test environment for wireless products
and how TTCN-3 helps to overcome the challenges in an efficient manner. He dwelt
upon scripting language developed by ETSI, which can be for testing across a
spectrum of domains, for example telecom, finance, automotive, etc.
Accenture has the expertise in wireless testing. Using test simulators,
vendors can simulate network environment in the lab to test the device. It helps
the vendors in early detection of bugs before they go to the test houses or
field. Accenture's TTCN-3 expertise is used to develop test scripts on the
simulator for conformance and interoperability testing.
In their joint presentation on 'Managing Regression Suites in Financial
Services (Fund Transfers) using TTCN-3', Bushra Taha, CSTE test analyst, Infosys
and Shri Lekha Panchangam, test engineer, Infosys, tried to explore the
possibility of defining the test methodology and test cases for business
function of fund transfers like wires, ACH check processing, etc, using TTCN-3.
TTCN-3 framework allows us to generate the performance of the project on a
report which can be customized as per the requirement. Usage of TTCN-3 would
significantly benefit the client with more time-to-market because of shorter
test cycles, the cost savings in providing QA services through better
operations, hence, increasing the RoI. Also, its easy to manage the regression
suite with multiple functional and regression cycles, OS upgrades, enhancements
and infrastructure releases. More optimization can be done using model based
testing (MBT) methodology, and various tools provided by vendors.
On the benefits of this testing language, Wipro's Jayakishor Bhanga said that
TTCN-3 can help for timely introduction of VAS, and maintenance of network QoS.
TTCN-3 supports synchronous and asynchronous communication mechanisms, and
supports flexible definition of test data, apart from combining use of ASN.1
with TTCN-3.
LTE Testing
Pranab Dutta of Wipro talked about LTE UE testing and aspects including device
testing lifecycle, applicability of TTCN-3, LTE device conformance testing, etc.
He said, "Equipment vendors and operators will need a clear migration strategy
to move its customer base into LTE. Speed, performance, cost of deployment, and
ease of application development across multiple domains will be the key
parameters for LTE adoption. Also, one big challenge which operators have to
encounter in early times is the interoperability of multiple devices and
equipments from multiple vendors. Thus, testing becomes an important step in the
development of a software intensive system, as it checks the compliance of a
system to end user's requirements."
Protocol conformity testing, and interoperability testing (IOT) are two
significant phases in the lifecycle of LTE device testing. Typically these tests
are executed in third party test labs. Fixing the defects found in the third
party lab is a very expensive and time consuming process. As an alternative,
these tests could be executed in network simulation environment, thereby
reducing cost and time.
The protocol conformity test determines whether the device conforms to the
3GPP specifications. 3GPP defines the LTE protocol conformity test architecture
and has recommended TTCN-3 for test case scripting. TTCN-3 is a defacto testing
language that is supported by ETSI and is widely used to define Abstract Test
Suite or ATS.
Wipro's LTE Tesnovation Center is implementing LTE UE test cases and IOT test
cases using TTCN-3 to reduce testing cycle time and increase efficiency for
equipment vendors, device vendors and operators. Gangadharaiah from Wipro
Testing Services said, "Wipro adopted TTCN-8 years back and started TTCN
initiative in June 2001 by implementing TTCN-2 in SNMP and UMTS. By June 2003,
we started contributing to the 3GPP and also have a significant amount of test
cases written in TTCN-2. In 2007, we developed our own TTCN-3 ecosystem to
suffice the need of our customers. Going forward, Wipro is trying to extend this
framework and use it in banking and security."
Kannan K
kannan@cybermedia.co.in
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