An introduction to the testing and test control notation (TTCN-3)

• Published in: Computer networks (Amsterdam, Netherlands : 1999) Vol. 42; no. 3; pp. 375 - 403
• Main Authors: Grabowski, Jens, Hogrefe, Dieter, Réthy, György, Schieferdecker, Ina, Wiles, Anthony, Willcock, Colin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 21.06.2003; Elsevier Sequoia S.A
• Subjects: Black-box testing; Distributed processing; Distributed systems testing; ETSI; Networks; Programming languages; Standardization; Studies; Test implementation; Test languages; Test methods; Test specification; Testing; TTCN; TTCN-3; Test implementation; ETSI; TTCN-3; Standardization; TTCN; Test specification; Black-box testing; Distributed systems testing; Test languages
• ISSN: 1389-1286; 1872-7069
• DOI: 10.1016/S1389-1286(03)00249-4

The testing and test control notation (TTCN-3) is a new test specification and test implementation language that supports all kinds of black-box testing of distributed systems. TTCN-3 was developed in the years 1999 to 2002 at the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), as a redesign of the tree and tabular combined notation (TTCN) standard (ITU-T Rec. X.292). TTCN-3 is built from a textual core language that provides interfaces to different data description languages and the possibility of different presentation formats. This makes TTCN-3 quite universal and application independent. TTCN-3 is being published as the ITU-T Rec. Z.140 series. This paper provides an introduction to TTCN-3. This includes an overall view of the TTCN-3 core language, a description of the existing presentation formats, an explanation of the implementation of TTCN-3-based test systems and a discussion about the current usage and the future of the language. The authors all participated in the work within ETSI.