Case study description

The system under test is the operation and maintenance subsystem of a 3G radio access network element. This subsystem is implemented in an object-oriented way and uses CORBA as middleware to provide its services and to request services from other network elements. The system under test is acting simultaneously as server and as client. This means that the system under test is accessed via several interfaces, at some of these interfaces it is acting as a client, at the other ones it is acting as a server. The test system will also act as client and as server, but with opposite roles. This case study will be used to evaluate to which degree the testing of CORBA-based applications is supported by TTCN-3 in general and by the TTCN-3 tool used within TT-Medal. Three aspects are important here:

• At first, it must be possible to use the IDL definitions – either by importing them directly into the TTCN-3 code or by converting them automatically to TTCN-3 and using these TTCN-3 definitions. But no manual work should be needed to write TTCN-3 definitions corresponding to the IDL definitions.
• At second, it must be possible to communicate with the SUT using procedure-based communication with CORBA as middleware. Therefore the SA must contain or must be connected to an ORB that provides access to this middleware. Ideally, the SA should be generic, i.e. it should not depend on the IDL definitions.
• At third, it must be possible to add implementations of external functions to the test adapter. It must be possible, that the test system developer can add further external functions to those that are already needed to control the SA.