Content-Level Conformance Testing: An Information Mapping Case Study

Content-level conformance testing is a key to achieving interoperable data exchange among applications deployed across collaborating, yet independent enterprises. In this paper, we identify four types of content-level conformance tests to support interoperable data exchange: documentverification tests, information-mapping tests, transaction-behavior tests, and scenario-based tests. We describe in substantial detail our experience with information-mapping tests within an industrial B2B integration effort. We review different approaches to information-mapping conformance verification including logical consistency checking, human-computer interaction, and event-based checking. We adopt the human-computer interaction approach and describe a test-case generation methodology. The methodology details modeling, test requirements specification, abstract test-case definition, and, ultimately, executable test-case generation. Lastly, we provide experimental results of applying our methodology in the context of an automotive industry development of data exchange standard for interoperable inventory visibility applications.