D9.5 Report on the impact of the MIDAS testing framework on test standards development, has been delivered

The main objective of this document is to outline contributions and impact of the MIDAS project to standardization practices. The impact is evaluated in accordance to MIDAS standardization framework defined in deliverable D9.3. The document presents the gaps, inconsistencies and potential advancements of current software testing standards and techniques identified during the project execution and presents tangible contributions of the MIDAS project to these testing challenges.

Recently published ISO/IEC 29119 Software testing standard represent the broader scope for software testing techniques and provides one definitive standard for software testing that defines vocabulary, processes, documentation, techniques and a process assessment model for software testing that can be used within any software development life cycle. To the large degree, the MIDAS Domain specific language (DSL), which have been used to formally specify MIDAS testing profiles and System models, have relied on the definitions from ISO/IEC 29119. In developing the MIDAS DSL, we have found inconsistencies in the ISO/IEC 29119 definitions, and the proposal of refined definitions has been prepared within MIDAS project.
MIDAS heavily relies on the model-based testing (MBT) approach and the use of the TTCN-3 test modelling language. The document presents the alignment of the MIDAS MBT workflows with ETSI MBT process definition and it’s enhancements and extensions. Furthermore, we also discuss and compare the latest ETSI’s TDL approach to test modelling with MIDAS DSL based approach.

In designing the MIDAS automated test design workflow, we have been faced with a strong dependency on TTCN-3 commercial tools in the process of test models transformation into executable TTCN-3 test cases. Such dependency could be avoided with the extension of the TTCN-3 multipart standards, proposed by MIDAS partners and accepted by ETSI MTS at the last MTS meeting in October 2015 in a way that the standard support direct transformation of WSDL models into TTCN-3 models. This particular contribution to TTCN-3 standard as well as maintenance activities on TTCN-3 standard has been further presented.

As defined in UTP1.2, MIDAS test framework relies heavily on the utilization of UML based definition of System models. UTP (UML test Profile) has been selected as a base for the definition for of MIDAS DSL profile, which expresses abstract and platform-independent test case specifications that are later on translated into TTCN-3 scripts. Project partners, namely FF and UGOE have made a pioneering work in defining the new OMG standard, namely UTP 2.0 profile. Work performed within MIDAS project had a substantial impact on the development of the UTP 2.0 standard. Here, we briefly outline key impacts of the MIDAS project to the UTP 2.0 standard development.