A Micro-Kernel Test Engine for Automatic Test System

In traditional automatic test solutions, a test engine usually encompasses all functions in its kernel, including compiling test program, generating test event chain, scheduling test process and executing test events. This makes the engine tightly coupled with test language and the system under test, so that it is difficult to maintain, optimize and extend the test engine. In order to solve these problems, a micro-kernel test engine is designed and implemented based on the service oriented architecture. This microkernel approach decouples function modules to make the test engine kernel independent of the system under test and the test language. This also makes the test engine more modularized, so that the debugging process and maintenance work of the engine can be much easier. With new compiling component and test adapters, the engine kernel can be extended for new test methods or reused in new test applications. The application example and extensibility analysis discussed in section 6 show the feasibility of this micro-kernel test engine.