projects

Standards and Conformance Testing Group

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Projects and Activities

The current activities underway within the Standards and Conformance Testing Group are varied. We participate in standards activities as well as the development of conformance tests for new technologies.

Conformance Test Development

The development of metrics, tools, and techniques to determine whether implementations of public specifications conform to that specification. A

in the status column, indicates an active, current project.


	Description	Contact
VRML and X3D	Test Suite and Parser for VRML Specification (ISO 10744) and X3D (a profile of VRML)	Michael Kass
Java	Tests, formal descriptions, reference implementations.	Lisa Carnahan
CGM	Interpreter Test Suite for ATA Profile	Jacki Schneider
XML, DOM,	Test Suite for XML and DOM	Mary Brady
XSLT	Test suite for XSL Transformations	Carmelo Montanez-Rivera
XML Registry/Repository	Reference implementation and and specification for registry/repository	Lisa Carnahan Len Gallagher
SQL	Tests for Intermediate SQL level of Database Language SQL	Carmelo Montanez-Rivera
POSIX	Test suite for POSIX	Martha Gray
Programming Languages	Test suites for Cobol85, Fortran78	Carmelo Montanez-Rivera
PHIGS	Test suite for PHIGS	Lynne Rosenthal

Standards Development Efforts

The development of standards for emerging technologies is done in partnership with industry. The objective is to assist industry in building complete, unambigious, testable specifications. This is accomplished by using formal methods, defining conformance, and/or providing guidance on establishing tests and testing programs.


	Description	Contact
DASE	Defining conformance and developing a reference implementation for the DASE specification.	Alan Goldfine
Distributed Interactive Learning Systems	Defining requirements and developing specifications, prototype demonstrations, and testing techniques.	Marty Gray
Archectecture Description Languages	Identifying and defining the essential language elements to be provided by an industrial ADL in order to allow creation of production-level specifications.	Chris Dabrowski
Integrated ISO GIS Standard	Integration of the parts of ISO 15046 by developing object specifications using the UML and developing methods for validating that specifications	Chris Dabrowski

New Test Methods

Software Testing by Statistical Methods: Investigation and development of new methods for software testing based on stochastic processes and statistical measures in order to improve the quality of software and to provide qualitative measures for determining the probability that software correctly adheres to its specification.

Formal Specification Languages in Conformance Testing: Identify the issues, requirements and problem areas involved with using formal methods and formal specification languages for conformance testing; and develop a prototype formal specification language specifically for conformance testing.

Automatic Generation of Conformance Tests: Comparison of development time and coverage of hand generated code and code developed using ADL.

Alternatives to Falsification Testing: Initial investigation of alternative approaches to conformance testing.

Technology Transfer

Directory of Conformance Testing Programs, Products and Services: Links to organizations that provide conformance products and services. Use the Directory to locate: test suites and tools, certification programs, test services, and products that have been tested.

Validated Products List (VPL): Identifies products that have been tested for conformance and have a current NIST validation certificate or registered test report. Click here for VPL changes or for specific topics: [Computer Security] [CGM][POSIX][Programming Languages] [SQL]

Emal any comments about this page to: clare.lucey@nist.gov