The Testing and Test Control Notation Version 3 (TTCN-3) is a standardized testing technology developed and maintained by ETSI and specifically designed for testing and certification. The ETSI TTCN-3 standards have also been adopted by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T) in the Z.160 series.
TTCN-3 is a test specification language that applies to a variety of application domains and types of testing. It has been used since 2000 in standardization as well as in industry, research, international projects and academia. In response to the demands of the user community TTCN-3 is being continuously improved and extended.
TTCN-3 provides all the constructs and features necessary for black box testing. It embodies a rich typing system and powerful matching mechanisms, support for both message-based and procedure-based communication, timer handling, dynamic test configuration including concurrent test behaviour, the concept of verdicts and verdict resolution and much more.
As a result of its intrinsic extensibility, TTCN-3 is able to import external data and type specifications directly and external implementations can be integrated in order to extend the functionality specified in the TTCN-3 standards. Several mappings of external data and type specifications such as ASN.1, IDL and XML are already standardized. Others can easily be added.
A TTCN-3 documentation notation based on embedded tags is also standardized in ES 201 873‑10.
The abstract definition of test cases which is fundamental to TTCN-3 makes it possible to specify a non-proprietary test system which is independent of both platform and operating system. The abstract definitions can be either compiled or interpreted for execution.
The TTCN-3 reference architecture defines standardized interfaces for test control for encoding and decoding of data and for test execution.
A short introduction about TTCN-3 is available with the TTCN-3 leaflet.
