Principles of a broad based environment for test (ABBET) demonstration (PAD): "ABBET in action"

ABBET (A Broad Based Environment for Test) is planned to be free of any dependencies-hardware and/or software. This implementation independent concept while desirable appeared difficult to achieve until an investigation of the potential of Object Technology was conducted. The use of Object Technology seemed to address test program cost issues in the commercial sector where savings of 20-40% and similar and/or greater reductions in test program cycle time were experienced. To determine if ABBET was an approach that would withstand the rigors of production implementation in a "Real World" setting, a demonstration was planned. Because the ABBET standards adaptation of Object Technology was not complete and because there were no ABBET compliant test program development tools in the marketplace, the evolving standard was reviewed and a subset of the principles that underlie ABBET were identified to be exercised. If was believed that if these principles could be followed successfully in a pilot program, the feasibility of applying an Object Technology based standard to achieve implementation independence that, in turn, would lower the cost of test could be proven. Based on this premise, the Principles of ABBET Demonstration (PAD) was conducted. This paper provides a background that discusses, in some detail, the reasons for creating ABBET and the circumstances that led to PAD. The preliminary PAD results are described and projections made as to the outcome of PAD and how ABBET should mature in the future to benefit from the PAD experience.