1.    What is TTCN-3?
-    Testing and Test Control Notation Version 3 (maintained by ETSI – European Telecom Standardization Institute)
-    TTCN-3 Testing Language
-    Standardized modern high level language for testing
-    TTCN-3 Architecture
-    TTCN-3 TCI and TRI interfaces
-    Black-box, functional testing of reactive systems

2.    What are the most popular domains for TTCN-3
-    Mobile telecommunications: 3G, 3GPP LTE, WiMAX, GSM
-    Internet protocols: SIP, IMS, IPv6…
-    Intelligent transport systems (ITS)
-    Broadband technologies: ATM, DSL
-    Middleware platforms: Web Services,
-    IOT – Internet Of Things (phones, building automation, smart metering, fleet management system, 6lowPan etc)
-    Automotive (AUTOSAR conformance and acceptance testing
-    Smart Cards
-    …

3.    How does usage of TTCN-3 save resources (time and money)?
-    Offers potential for reducing training and test maintenance costs significantly
-    TTCN-3 is easy to learn
-    Pre-developed TTCN-3 test scripts by ETSI
-    Increases testing productivity and enables more test cycles
-    Test script generation can be automatic by using model-based testing

4.    Who is using TTCN-3 already?
-    TTCN-3 has strong market presence – it is used, maintained and promoted by ETSI
-    TTCN-3 has proven track record of users (Nokia Siemens Networks, Nokia, Siemens, Ericsson, Motorola, Vodafone, EMT, France Telecom, O2, Rohde & Schwarz, Aeroflox)
-    TTCN-3 has been increasing the presence in different domains

5.    Is studying of TTCN-3 secure investment?
-    Yes, TTCN-3 is secure investment, because:
·    TTCN-3 has been used almost 20 years
·    It is constantly developed and maintained at ETSI
·    There is Number of independent TTCN-3 tool providers (you are not dependent on single tool provider)
·    TTCN-3 has well provided support and common methodology
·    TTNC-3 is internationally standardized testing language (TTCN-3 standard suite)
·    TTCN-3 is specifically designed for testing and certification
·    It has been proved to work in very large and complex industrial tests, e.g 3GPP LTE, Wimax and IPv6 etc.
·    TTCN-3 is a testing technology that applies to a variety of application domains and types of testing

6.    Why to use TTCN-3 for testing and not some other high level programming language (python, java)?
-    Tracing and lookup facilities are provided by TTCN-3 tool (no programming needed)
-    In TTCN-3 operational semantics is clearly defined
-    Cost benefits:
·    Coding effort
·    Results analysis efforts
·    Maintenance effort
·    Debugging efforts
·    Skill/training efforts

7.    What type of coding effort is needed when using TTCN-3?
-    Abstract Test Suite (ATS)
·    Test dedicated language – coding effort reduced
·    ATS concept makes test suite usable on different platforms and tools
-    System Adapter (SA)
·    Standardized TTCN-3 Runtime Interface (TRI) for C, C++, C# and Java mapping

8.    What are TTCN-3 testing results analysis and code debugging efforts?
-    When test was executed – how to know that the results are correct?
·    TTCN-3 has built in verdict mechanism
·    TTCN-3 Tools offer means for analysis and tracing
-    TTCN-3 tools have built-in debuggers (Elvior tool has a native TTCN-3 debugger)

9.    Does using of TTCN-3 reduce test suites maintenance efforts?
-    Yes, maintenance effort is reduced, because of
·    Concept of test events (easier definition of test functionality)
·    Separation between abstract and concrete layers (TRI, TCI)
·    Less code to look at given functionality

10.    What are the TTCN-3 skill/training efforts?
-    TTCN-3 is high level test dedicated programming language:
·    Syntax similar to C and Pascal
·    Test dedicated concepts ands constructions
-    TTCN-3 study is incremental study:
·    Basics – within some hours to 1 day
·    Advanced – within 2 days
·    Skills build up during the time

TTCN-3 Quick Reference Card is updated for TTCN-3 edition 4.3.1 [2011-06]. This Quick Reference Card summarizes language features to support users of TTCN-3.

Elvior TestCast MBT is a complete model-based TTCN-3 testing solution that covers the entire model-based testing workflow from modeling to TTCN-3 test cases execution and analysis. TestCast MBT integrates the technologies from two of the world’s leading test tool vendors - Conformiq and Elvior. TestCast MBT combines the superior compilation and test execution speed of Elvior’s TestCast TTCN-3 tool with the power of the world leading model based testing solution from Conformiq to provide a comprehensive model based testing suite.

• TestCast Modeller for modeling with UML state machines
• TestCast Designer for automatic test generation (based on Conformiq technology)
• TestCast TTCN-3 tool for test execution and analysis

ETSI is organizing the TTCN-3 User Conference 2012 from 11^th to 13^th June 2012, in Bangalore, India.

The ETSI testing language TTCN-3 is a well established and mature testing technology applicable to many domains, including automotive, medical, aerospace, transportation, and others. In addition, its use has expanded from functional conformance testing into load, performance, and interoperability testing.

TTCN-3 has also been constantly improved to cope with the latest upcoming testing requirements. Identifying future challenges of testing is, and has always been, a key concern to keep TTCN-3 as a modern and innovative testing technology and thereby protect existing investments in TTCN-3. Recent shifts in technology, new ways of working (e.g., agile development), as well as upcoming new application areas such as Long Term Evolution (LTE) and Machine to Machine (M2M) have a particular impact on system validation and testing.

The TTCN-3 User Conference (T3UC) 2012 will be hosted in Bangalore, India. Along the lines of other geographies of the world, India has also discovered the value of this application and tool-independent test specification language. T3UC for 2012 offers an opportunity for testing experts, tool and product makers to showcase and learn about the latest approaches and advances in TTCN-3 technology to support their quest to provide top quality products in today’s challenging markets.

ETSI members are warmly invited to submit presentations (see submission dates below).

The 2012 conference will be followed by a separate workshop on model-based testing which has turned recently from a topic of research into an industrially deployed testing technology due. ETSI will share its ongoing standardization efforts in this area in TC MTS, giving an opportunity to listen and share industrial user experiences on model-based testing.

This 11th edition of T3UC is co-organized by Sasken, ISQT and ETSI. It will feature refereed tutorials and presentations from members of the TTCN-3 user community as well as keynotes from invited speakers.

The MBT workshop will be featuring invited tutorials, keynote, and presentations.

T3UC 2012 provides a full up to date picture of TTCN-3:

• first-hand information on the practical use of the language;
• user experience in introducing, implementing and operating TTCN-3;
• specific real-life case studies;
• capabilities and availability of TTCN-3 tools; and
• the direction of future standardization and development to reinforce its place as the  building block of integrated design and testing environments.

The major new capabilities of TTCN-3 compared to TTCN-2 are:

• different presentation formats (e.g. tabular and MSC presentation formats),
• dynamic concurrent testing configurations,
• operations for synchronous and asynchronous communications,
• ability to specify encoding information and other attributes (including user extensibility),
• data and signature templates with powerful matching mechanisms,
• type and value parameterization,
• assignment and handling of test verdicts,
• test suite parameterization and test case selection mechanisms, and
• combined use of TTCN-3 and ASN.1, IDL, and XML.

There is available a very good comparison of TTCN-2 and TTCN-3 by Claude Desroches.

TTCN-2 is an outdated technology replaced by more advanced TTCN-3 testing technology.  There are still organisations that have huge amount of legacy TTCN-2 test suites from the past. Those legacy TTCN-2 test suites keep those companies stuck in TTCN-2 legue and prevent them to enjoy the benefits of TTCN-3.

Migrating from TTCN-2 to TTCN-3 can be done almost automatically as explained by Thomas Deiss.

There are commercial services and tools available for helping users to migrate the legacy TTCN-2 test suites to TTCN-3:

• Elvior TTCN-2 to TTCN-3 migration tool and services
• Testing Technologies TTtwo2three tool
• IBM t2tot3 tool

TTCN

Work on Tree and Tabular Combined Notation (TTCN) first started in 1984 in as part of the work on OSI conformance testing methodology and framework. Since then TTCN was widely used for describing protocol conformance test suites in standard organizations such as ITU-T, ISO/IEC, ATM Forum, and ETSI and in industries. The main characteristics of TTCN that contributed to its wide acceptance are that:

• its Tabular Notation allowed its user to describe easily and naturally in a tree form all possible scenarios of stimulus and various reactions to it between the tester and the Implementation Under Test (IUT),
• its verdict system was designed such that to facilitate conformance judgment on the test result agrees against the test purpose, and
• it provides a mechanism to describe appropriate constraints on received messages so that conformance of the received messages can be mechanically evaluated against the test purpose.

TTCN-2

The first edition of TTCN was not suitably designed to describe the concurrent behavior within the tester or within IUT or between them and the need for an extension to deal with concurrent behavior efficiently was soon recognized. In the process of extension, in addition to concurrency mechanism, the concepts of module and package were newly introduced to TTCN to increase reusability and to achieve encapsulation. Also manipulation of ASN.1 encoding was made possible beyond simple syntax declaration. The TTCN extended in this way was adopted as TTCN version 2 (TTCN-2) in 1998.

TTCN-3

In spite of the improvements in TTCN-2, TTCN was designed from the beginning with OSI-based protocol conformance testing in mind and even TTCN-2 was not adequate for various kinds of testing such as interoperability testing, robustness testing, regression testing, system testing and integration testing or for various emerging testing application areas such as mobile protocol, Internet protocol, service testing, module testing, CORBA-based platform testing and API testing. Therefore a more flexible and powerful test description language was called for. In order to meet such a need ETSI started working on a new version of TTCN in 1998 and completed it in October 2000.

TTCN-3 retained the proven features of TTCN-2 but was designed to provide the new features listed above. A single most visible difference is that the previous versions adopted as the main description notation the Tabular Notation and its textual counterpart a machine-processible language for translation to programs whereas in TTCN-3 the usual programming language-like notation is adopted as the core language with the Tabular Notation and MSC as presentation languages.

Comparing it with TTCN-2, TTCN-3 has the following improvements

• well-defined syntax, interchange format and static semantics and
• precise execution algorithm (operational semantics).

More information:

• The evolution of TTCN
• TTCN – Wikipedia
• Why use TTCN-3?

Yes, that is right. This year the TTCN-3 User Conference takes place in Beld, Slovenia. The dates to be booked are between 7-9th of June 2011.

From T3UC 2011 official homepage:

Testing is now a multi-billion dollar business and is a key issue in any serious software and system development process. TTCN-3 (the Testing and Test Control Notation version 3) has become the de facto standardized test language, with global deployment in telecommunications, transportation, internet, medical, web-based services, distributed systems etc. Its versatility ensures it an effective role in functional conformance testing, load testing, performance testing and interoperability testing. Join us for the 10th TTCN-3 User Conference in the beautiful location of Bled, Slovenia, 7th – 9th June 2011.

For more information go to http://www.ttcn3uc.eu/, registration and call for sponsorships are both open.

This is a question that quite often a person new to the TTCN-3 community asks. Of course, it is in the community interest to provide the most information on the variety of tools out there. There is a brief list of commercial TTCN-3 tools currently available on the market.

1. TestCast - TTCN-3 test platform for development, execution (compiler)  and results analysis. Produced by Elvior.
2. Exhaustif//TTCN – TTCN-3 compiler produced by MTP.
3. OpenTTCN Tester 2011 – TTCN-3 compiler produced by OpenTTCN
4. TTWorkbench - TTCN-3 test plaform for development, execution (compiler) and results analysis. Produced by TestingTechnologies.
5. TauTester – TTCN-3 compiler produced by Telelogic, acquired by IBM
6. Real Time Development Studio V.4.0 – modelling tool including also TTCN-3 compiler. Produced by PragmaDev
7. TTCN-3 Express – TTCN-3 compiler produced by Fraunhofer FIRST and Metarga.

The information is illustrative and more information of the tools and their specifications are available on the TTCN-3 vendors websites. If you spot any new commercial tool, please post it in the comments.

In platform adapter you implement:

1) external functions (if any) used in your TTCN-3 code

2) external timers (if any)

If your TTCN-3 script does not contain external functions and you do not need external timers then you do not need platform adapter ( this is in case with some test tools, as they have built in timers and normally external timers are not needed).

Main areas for public TTCN-3 test suites that ETSI provides:

For full list and further references, please see Public TTCN-3 Test Suites at ETSI.