TTCN-3 -- A new Test Specification Language for Black-Box Testing of Distributed Systems

The Tree and Tabular Combined Notation (TTCN) is a well-established notation for the specification of test cases for OSI protocol conformance testing. The third edition of TTCN (TTCN-3) is currently under development by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute. TTCN-3 will be a complete redesign of the entire test specification language. The close relation between tabular and textual representation will be removed, OSI specific language constructs will be cleared away and new concepts will be introduced. The intention of this redesign is to modernize TTCN and to widen its application area beyond pure OSI conformance testing. This paper will motivate the need for TTCN-3 and introduce the principles of TTCN-3.