Today's automatic test system implementations likely require some aspect of real-time performance, concurrency, and network connectivity. Users expect responsive, efficient operation, both at the local operator interface as well as remotely via a LAN or the Internet. Distributed, concurrent COTS software systems, such as Sun Microsystem's Java and Microsoft's Win32 are a natural fit to these requirements. Based on real-world experience developing distributed, concurrent test systems, this paper reviews some of the unexpected obstacles implementers might encounter. We discuss the creation of threads, thread scheduling, and the use of thread synchronization constructs. We compare these mechanisms to those available in IEEE Standard ATLAS and test-specific programming frameworks.

Distributed and concurrent test environments on popular COTS platforms

The author discusses the application of tasking in Ada test programs to satisfy multithreaded dynamic functional testing requirements Ada's inherent multitasking capability, which can express both control and data dependencies among simultaneous actions, is one of the reasons why the IEEE ATLAS Committee (SCC 20) is presently engaged in developing a new Ada-based test program specification standard, designated informally as ABET/ATLAS Experience using ATLAS tasking can be applied in the development of the ABET standards and in the implementation of Ada test programs The author cites instances where multitasking is and is not appropriate and suggests some guidelines for implementing multithreaded Ada test programs developed in conformance with ABET/ATLAS >

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel2/653/6713/00270128.pdf

D.B. Stinson

Papers

Implementing multi-threaded test methods with ABET/ATLAS