Adaptable and Automated Testing Tools

Principal Investigators:
Rob Snelick
(301) 975-5924
robert.snelick@nist.gov

Gavin O'Brien
(301) 975-4606
gavin.obrien@nist.gov

Objective:
To build test development environments that produce a set of integrated testing tools, including self-adapting test suites that are dynamically created and factor in unique characteristics for defined subsets of a given specification or sets of specifications. In addition, following the principles of service oriented architecture (SOA), we propose to build a testing services infrastructure that can be configured dynamically to build test systems tailored to individual need.

Background:
Many enterprises have become driven by digital data, including health care, manufacturing, e-commerce, and homeland security. Each of these enterprises defines standards for the exchange and manipulation of industry-based information. These standards are often complex, with many optional features and include references to other standards or are comprised of many base standards that must work seamlessly together. As the plethora of standards is promulgated throughout the industry, the demand for metrics to measure conformance is essential. Old methods of systematically hand crafting tests and building single use tools must give way to newer methods of generating self-adapting tests and reusable tool components. For the past several years our target application domain has been healthcare with a focus on the Health Level 7 (HL7) version 2 messaging standard and the clinical document architecture (CDA) standard—although the techniques developed can be applied broadly. HL7 version 2 defines message profiles that state precisely, in XML, the structure and constraints of a message. CDA is a document standard that states precisely, in XML, the structure and constraints of a document. In FY10 we will continue to apply the techniques to further build out our toolkit to support a broader spectrum of healthcare data exchange standards. This will include NCPDP SCRIPT and the continuation of our work in HL7 version 3. We will also investigate the opportunities to adapt and apply our techniques to the manufacturing domain. Specifically we will target the work of the Open Applications Group (OAGi) which is an organization that focuses on promoting interoperability for both inter and intra enterprises business processes.