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You are here: The Open Group > Consortia Services > Testing Services Overview > Testing Services

	Testing Services
	planning, automation, test suite development and maintenance, interoperability events

Conformance testing provides a means by which products can be consistently measured to ensure that they meet the requirements contained in a specification.

The conformance testing services offered by The Open Group cover the full life cycle of test suite implementation and usage from the test planning stage through to the continuing alignment of the test suite with an evolving specification. The Open Group implements its testing services in-line with existing international standards and has a proven record of successful implementations against these standards.

Conformance test suites benefit specification and product developers by:

• Analyzing the specification into individual testable components that define the scope of testing needed to measure conformance
• Uncovering variances in interpretation of the specification and allowing these to be discussed and resolved
• Enabling product developers to measure progress
• Providing a portable implementation of the test cases that are independent of implementation characteristics
• Improving interoperability between products using the specified interfaces

The Open Group has developed and currently maintains conformance test suites for many technologies, including UNIX^®, CORBA^®, LDAP, Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), the X Window System, Motif^®, Digital Video Broadcasting Multimedia Home Platform, Secure Electronic Transactions (SET), Common Data Security Architecture (CDSA), and Linux. This depth and variety of experience has produced a development methodology and knowledge base that is unrivalled in the IT industry.

Test Plan Development

The test plan development phase defines:

• The automated environment used to execute the test suite
• The individual test cases that are needed to measure product conformance to the requirements defined in the specification
• The implementation plan for test suite development

The Open Group's test plan development provides tracability between the specification's requirements and individual test cases ensuring that all requirements are adequately tested. During this phase, different implementation options are analyzed and potential variances in interpretation are indicated to the specification authors for their consideration.

Automated Test Environment

Using an automated test environment reduces the effort required by an implementer to execute the test suite allowing most test cases to run unattended and their results to be analyzed later.

The wide variety of technologies addressed by The Open Group's test development has created a rich set of automated test execution tools. These tools provide a foundation for the development of a conformance test execution environment suited to the specific needs of the specification. The tools enable development for either a closed test laboratory environment or for remote testing using hosted web services.

Test Suite Development

The Open Group's test suite development methodology uses proven techniques to create a set of implementation independent test cases designed to measure conformance. The test suite development phase may include the integration of existing test cases into a consistent format that executes under the control of the automated test environment.

Working with product implementers, The Open Group is able to deliver test cases that align with product development time lines. These tests can then be used to identify deficiencies during the development phase avoiding expensive post-production engineering.

Test Suite Maintenance

This service ensures that the test suite remains aligned to the specification as it evolves, providing enhanced versions of the test suite for each specification revision.

The Open Group also manages an interpretations process to assess claims of inaccuracies in the test suite or ambiguities in the specification.

Interoperability Events

Interoperability Events are a vehicle for software developers to come together to test systems and applications software interoperating with one another. The Open Group provides everything required to organize, set-up and run such events.  We also provide virtual interoperability events with remote access provision.

Interoperability Event management typically involves the following:

• Establishing the nature of the testing, 
• Scheduling the event, 
• Infrastructure (wide and local area networking),
• Providing the venue, 
• Logistics, and
• Administration. 

Examples include the Bluetooth SIG UnPlugFests, DMTF's Fusion event, and The Open Group's own DIRConnect events.

Testing Services

• Testing Services
• Test Suite Licensing, Maintenance and Support