Reuse of TTCN-3 Code

Today, the growing size and complexity of software along with decreasing development times causes tremendous challenges to software testing. This has driven the whole software industry to seek new ways to test more efficiently and effectively. Software reuse has been practiced for decades and successful industrial studies have demonstrated such profits as increased productivity and quality as well as decreased development times and costs. This raises the question of whether software reuse could be applied to a testing context as well. This work studies the reuse of tests that are created with a new test specification and implementation language TTCN-3 (Testing and Test Control Notation). In order to apply reuse into a testing context, a set of guidelines for reusable TTCN-3 code is presented. These guidelines are based on the techniques familiar from software reuse, TTCN-3 test system and language characteristics, and on some of the specifics of software testing. Applicability of the guidelines, and the level and profits of TTCN-3 test reuse are determined in a case study. The case study plainly demonstrates that the majority of the guidelines were successfully applied and that they had a positive impact on measured levels and profits of reuse. The overall results, experiences and impressions of TTCN-3 test reuse during this work were very encouraging and will hopefully lead to future projects in areas of test reuse.