The Test Bed team has published a new guide with detailed information and a step-by-step tutorial to support test developers with complex conformance testing needs.

The Interoperability Test Bed, and in a particular the GITB software and its supporting specifications, is a comprehensive conformance testing solution for a project’s semantic and technical specifications. Its typical use case is to validate exchanges between IT systems, in which the Test Bed acts as a testing counterpart to the systems under test, exchanging data with them according to specific scenarios, and validating communication details and messages to ensure they conform to the target specifications.

Using the GITB Test Description Language (TDL) test developers define test cases that can range from one-off exchanges to multi-step stateful conversations that validate both individual messages and conversational consistency. In doing so, the test engine can be extended with project-specific capabilities to cover custom messaging, validation and processing needs, by means of supporting services implementing the GITB test service APIs. 

To support test developers getting started with the GITB software, the Test Bed team maintains a series of guides, aimed at introducing its technical concepts as well as implementing simple test scenarios. These introductory guides are now extended with a new complex test development guide that focuses on real-world testing needs involving message exchanges and custom capability extensions.

The new guide assumes a fictional specification as an example, and places the reader in a test developer’s role facing specific conformance testing needs. The guide then proceeds to address in a hands-on and step-by-step manner each implementation step, developing several test cases as well as optional advanced extensions. As part of this guide the user covers test scenarios that most projects would typically foresee, notably:

• Sending messages to systems under test.
• Receiving messages from systems under tests.
• Validating error handling via “unhappy flow” test scenarios.

In doing so, the user covers aspects such as handling message exchanges, validating content, and generating test data using templates and test session state. The developed test cases are also complemented by a custom test service extension to handle project-specific messaging needs. Furthermore, and besides test development, the user is also guided through the Test Bed’s user interface to manage the environment’s configuration and execute tests to verify the overall setup.

Finally, the new guide also provides instructions on how to put in place an efficient development workflow, to ensure test development is as streamlined as possible. The proposed approach uses command line tools, scripting and the Test Bed’s REST API to quickly redeploy test suite updates, and to debug test cases and custom test services.

If you are starting out with the Test Bed to cover your conformance testing needs, the best entry point remains the Test Bed’s developer onboarding guide. The new guide on complex test development provides you with an in-depth second step to begin test development and gain hands-on experience, while setting you up to work as efficiently as possible. Besides this new guide you can of course continue to consult the reference documentation for the GITB TDL and test services for further details on specific points. For general information on the Test Bed be sure to visit the Test Bed’s Joinup space, whereas if you are looking for a management-oriented introduction the best point to start with is its value proposition. Finally, remember to also subscribe to the Test Bed on Joinup to stay updated on its latest news and releases.

The Interoperability Test Bed is a service provided by the European Commission’s DIGIT, offering conformance testing and validation solutions in support of IT systems’ cross-border interoperability.