Chapter 14
Frameworks1
When developing large industrial test suites with multiple test developers, the ability to write consistent, maintainable code becomes very important. Parallel test development also often leads to accidental re-implementation of functionality. In addition, we often encounter situations in testing quite complex interfaces where messages can have a vast amount of parameters that need to be handled in every test. Our SIP examples in the previous chapters have already given a first indication and our LTE example that we will consider in Chapter 16 will show even more the full industrial reality of the possible level of information complexity. Let us keep in mind that SIP and LTE are just two examples and there are many other protocols, especially in the telecom and internet domain.
Test frameworks have been inspired from classic software development practice and try to provide answers to all of these issues. They also allow us to organise more efficiently test suite implementation. Typically such a framework is created by one or more expert test developers. Once the framework is available the bulk of test developers can then focus on testing objectives and functionality to be tested by implementing their code based on these frameworks—not needing to worry about every detail of each and every interface.
14.1 Frameworks and Test Suites
TTCN-3 test implementation based on frameworks can be simply understood as a structured specification of tests with four different ...
