Platform-independent and tool-neutral test descriptions for automated software testing

Abstract

Current automatic test execution techniques are sensitive to changes in program implementation. Moreover, different test descriptions are required by different testing tools. As a result, it is difficult to maintain or port test descriptions. To address this problem, we developed TestTalk, a comprehensive testing language. TestTalk test descriptions are platform-independent and tool-neutral. The same software test in TestTalk can be automatically executed by different testing tools on different platforms. The goal of TestTalk is to make software test descriptions, which represent a significant portion of a software project, last as long as the software project.