TRex: An Eclipse plug-in tool for TTCN-3 Editing, Refactoring, and Metrics

This presentation describes the recent development of the TRex Eclipse plug-in to address the needs for improved TTCN-3 specification. In particular, the presentation will discuss the motivation for the tool, providing an overview of the Eclipse plug-in tool capabilities, including editing features, refactoring, and metrics. Following experiences within Motorola the presentation will introduce refactoring rules and metrics that have been specifically implemented to aid the usability and maintainability of TTCN-3 templates. Simple metrics have been introduced to aid the assessment of potential maintenance issues and refactoring rules to address usability. The refactoring rules describe systematically how to restructure TTCN-3 template specifications of a test suite without changing the behaviour of the test suite. The result is a test suite which is easier to understand and cheaper to modify.