Report on the Standardization Project ``Formal Methods in Conformance Testing''

This paper presents the latest developments in the “Formal Methods in Conformance Testing” (FMCT) project of ISO and ITU–T. The project has been initiated to study the role of formal description techniques in the conformance testing process. The goal is to develop a standard that defines the meaning of conformance in the context of formal description techniques. We give an account of the current status of FMCT in the standardization process as well as an overview of the technical status of the proposed standard. Moreover, we indicate some of its strong and weak points, and we give some directions for future work on FMCT

A Service Request Description Language

To meet the new requirements of growing computer networks the client-server model has to be improved by new concepts with encreased functionality. Service management in distributed systems is realized by a service trading concept. This paper presents a language given in Backus-Naur Form which enables specification of service requests. First, a matching criteria is specified as conditioned Boolean expression in order to evaluate appropriate service offers. Additionally, a selection criteria can be used to yield the most suitable service. To limit the scope of a search it is possible to specify policies and search constraints on service properties which restrict the search on particular trading objects. The Service Request Description Language presented here is related to the ANSAware trader to increase its functionality by giving means for service searching and selecting

The specification and testing of conformance in ODP systems

Open Distributed Processing (ODP) is a joint standardisation activity of the ISO and ITU. A reference model has been defined which describes an architecture for building open distributed systems. This paper introduces the key aspects of the reference model of open distributed processing, including the ODP conformance framework. We discuss how specific formal techniques are used in the ODP viewpoints, along with the implications for conformance assessment using such techniques. Particular attention is given to the role of consistency in the conformance assessment process. Finally, we review the current work on an ODP conformance testing methodology. Keywords: Open Distributed Processing; Conformance; Formal Description Techniques. 1 THE OPEN DISTRIBUTED PROCESSING MODEL Open Distributed Processing (ODP) [29] is a joint standardisation activity of the ISO and ITU. A reference model has been defined which describes an architecture for building open distributed systems [36, 33]. Central..