Automated Conformance Testing of C2IS

Command, Control, and Information Systems (C2ISs) are complex software products that must conform to agreed standards in order to be interoperable in joint and combined operations. Due to the complexity of information exchange between heterogeneous C2ISs, thorough testing is indispensable to gain confidence that these standards are implemented correctly and semantic interoperability is indeed achieved. Testing can be performed in many different ways and by various means. For the Multilateral Interoperability Programme (MIP), a vendor-independent reference facility has been developed that checks the conformance of national C2ISs to the MIP specifications. MIP defines an interoperability standard for information exchange, which is of particular relevance for land forces and for information exchange between the services. The MIP Test Reference System (MTRS) is integral part of the MIP testing strategy. So far, the MTRS has been used for testing 27 C2ISs over the Internet. In this paper, we introduce the concepts and features of the MTRS and describe an industrial perspective of using a conformance test system such as the MTRS. Moreover, we highlight our approach to testing mappings of C2IS information onto/from a common data model in the context of replication-based information exchange.