Practical Test and Verification of Component Behavioral Characteristics

While test and certification of current Naval systems based on federated architectures is a well-understood process, existing methodologies will prove inadequate when applied to component-based distributed real-time systems employing dynamic resource management in a heterogeneous environment. This inadequacy in testing and certification can be addressed by the development of testing methodologies that characterize component behavior through specification of assertions on both functional and nonfunctional behaviors. The existing implementation of the Open Group’s “Assertion Definition Language” (ADL) already has many of the attributes necessary to satisfy a systematic functional verification methodology. Missing from the current implementation is the ability to verify a component’s nonfunctional behavioral characteristics in a real-time and distributed system. The goal of the Phase II effort is two fold: to extend the current ADL product to support functional and nonfunctional behavioral verification of components that compose those design patterns, and to investigate test strategies applicable to OA design patterns. The resulting product will be a specification-based assertion testing methodology and test environment framework that provides the ability to specify and verify critical component behavioral characteristics in a systematic way. Targeted characteristics will focus on hard and soft real-time behaviors such as deadline, latency, throughput, and jitter.