Conformiq Qtronic vs. Conformiq Test Generator

This page is a copy of an entry of July 2007 in the Weblog of Conformiq Software about "Model Driven Testing".
You can access the Weblog from the following link.

As you can see from our web pages our (Conformiq) product offering currently consists of two products: Qtronic and Conformiq Test Generator (aka CTG).

I´m often asked about the difference between the two. This is especially the case with those who have used CTG in the past and now try to bend their minds around Qtronic "modus operandi".

Conformiq Test Generator represents our 2nd generation test generation technology and was released in autumn 2002 (this was preceded by Swiftest, which we consider the 1st generation). Qtronic with roughly six months in the market, on the other hand, represents the 3rd generation –state-of-the-art– model-driven test automation. At this point it should be made clear that Qtronic as we know it today is not a successor to CTG in the sense that as a CTG-user you could just take your existing CTG test model and migrate to Qtronic.

The fundamental difference between Qtronic and CTG is in what the model used as the basis for test generation describes.

With CTG you define a test model, which is essentially a description of the environment of the System Under Test. If you were testing a server your test models would define the functionality of the client that interacts with the server. In the end this boils down to UML-based graphical test scripting.

Qtronic, on the other hand, takes in the design model/behavioral description of the SUT itself, thus implementing true model-driven test generation. Returning to our client-server example with Qtronic you would define the behavior of the server itself in order to test the server.

In a way you could see these two models as mirror images of each other; where a design model has an input, a test model has an output and vice versa (this is a simplification because in the case of non-deterministic models such simple "inversion" doesn´t work). The virtue of Qtronic is that it carries out this (mathematically challenging) "inversion" of a system design into test cases, which with CTG, given the same system design spec, has to be done manually by the test model designer. Qtronic hence eliminates the need for test design.

From a process point of view you could say that CTG is a more traditional testing tool whereas Qtronic carries through the different phases of a software process by providing support for automatic deployment of early-stage design artefacts not only in development but also in testing. And well-defined designs specs of any system make for excellent documentation of the said system as well.

last updated: 29.08.2007

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