UMLTP22 — Arbitration specification binding mechanism restricted to only one arbitration specification

UTP 2 defines for each element that may produce a verdict (i.e. test set, test case and all procedural elements), default arbitration specifications that prescribe how to calculate that verdict. The default arbitration specifications are optimized for functional testing, though. In case of testing non-functional aspects such as fault tolerance, performance or security, the rules to determine functional verdicts do usually not suffice anymore. Therfore, UTP 2 enables the definiton of proprietary arbitration specification (mainfested as stereotype <<ArbitrationSpecification>>) to grant the hightest flexibility possible to the user.

However, the current mechanism to associate a test set, test case or procedural element with a dedicated arbitration specification is restricted to only one arbitration specification. Even though this would be sufficient in many situations, the problem with the current binding mechanism is that the test set, test case or procedural element is literally changed by the binding. This may lead to situations where elements are copied only for the sake of associating a different arbitration specification to a that element. This is a situation that should be avoided under all circumstances.

We suggest adding a loosely coupled arbitration specification binding mechanism that keeps the elements and the arbitration specifications that ought to be bound to that element separated from each other. This would bring the benefit that test sets, test cases and procedural elements stay clean of any arbitration specification. This would also foster reusability of these elements.

The loosely coupled mechanism to bind arbitration specifications to the test sets, test cases and procedural elements could be based on a new concept 'ArbitrationDirective' , similar to the 'TestDesignDirective' concept that already exists in the language and proved its applicability. By doing so, users could define and assign an arbitrary number of arbitration specifications to a test set, test case or procedural element without technically modifying any of these elements.

Introducing an arbitration specification binding mechanism

The RTF agreed that the current arbitration facility is not flexile enough and will result in a number of duplicated model elements just for the purpose of assigning different pass/fail criteria. The RTF has developed an arbitration specification binding mechanism that loosely couples arbitration targets with arbitration specifications. Bindings can be overridden in a cascading manner that fosters reuse of existing arbitration specification.