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Experience with the development and maintenance of large test suites specified using the Testing and Test Control Notation (TTCN-3) has shown that it is difficult to construct tests that are concise with respect to quality aspects such as maintainability or usability. The ISO/IEC standard 9126 defines a general software quality model that substantiates the term "quality" with characteristics and subcharacteristics. The domain of test specifications, however, requires an adaption of this general model. To apply it to specific languages such as TTCN-3, it needs to be instantiated. In this paper, we present an instantiation of this model as well as an approach to assess and improve test specifications. The assessment is based on metrics and the identification of code smells. The quality improvement is based on refactoring. Example measurements using our TTCN-3 tool TRex demonstrate how this procedure is applied in practise.

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Comprehensive testing of modern communication systems often requires large and complex test suites, which have to be maintained throughout the system life cycle. Industrial experience, with those written using the standardized Testing and Test Control Notation (TTCN‐3), has shown that this maintenance is a non‐trivial task and its burden can be reduced by means of appropriate concepts and tool support. To this aim, Motorola has collaborated with the University of Göttingen to develop TRex, an open‐source TTCN‐3 development environment, which notably provides suitable metrics and refactorings to enable the assessment and automatic restructuring of test suites. This article presents concepts like metrics and refactoring for the quality assurance of TTCN‐3 test suites and their implementation provided by the TRex tool. These means make it far easier to construct and maintain TTCN‐3 tests that are concise and optimally balanced with respect to maintainability quality characteristics. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.