Some Recommendations for Performance Testing Using TTCN-3

The testing and test control notation (TTCN-3) is a new test specification and test implementation language that supports all kinds of black-box testing of distributed system. Typical areas of application are protocol testing, service testing, module testing, testing of CORBA based platform, APIs, etc. However, some deficiencies have been discovered when using TTCN-3 to describe and implement real-time testing and performance testing. In this paper we present the limitations of the following concepts in current TTCN-3 standard for performance testing including test verdict type, timer, synchronization mechanism, etc. Then some recommendations are proposed which will help to minimize the inaccuracies and support better performance testing. The methodology for TTCN-3 based performance testing presented in this paper is from three aspects, including performance extension to current TTCN-3 standard, performance evaluation of the test system itself and redesign of original external function. The proposed methodology has now been used in performance testing for IP routers sponsored by Sichuan Network Communication Technology Key Laboratory with the financial support from National Natural Science Foundation of China.