New eDelivery Conformance Testing Platform Available
The new eDelivery Conformance Testing service, based on Interoperability Test Bed – a solution offered by the European Commission to facilitate the conformance testing of IT systems – has been launched last May 2023. It has already received positive feedback from stakeholders during a preview-presentation at the eDelivery Interoperability Forum in May 2023. The new generation eDelivery Conformance Testing service was developed in a joint effort by the eDelivery and the Interoperable Europe teams.
The new testing platform allows a faster turnaround when running the conformance tests as it allows users to carry out and troubleshoot the tests independently, with limited additional support from the eDelivery team. The new service also ensures a modern, more user-friendly user interface, enabling to run the tests in a more comfortable environment. Upon launch, the new system supports the same conformance tests as legacy one for the eDelivery AS4 profile. More tests will be added over time to ensure an even stronger conformance of the solutions with the eDelivery Common Profile as well as to support the testing of the profile enhancements currently absent from the platform (the Dynamic Sender, Dynamic Receiver, Pull Enhancement and Large Message Splitting and Joining). As the new platform is not only more user-friendly, but also more developer-friendly, these new tests will be implemented at a faster pace.
Apart from a growing community of eDelivery users, since 2016 there has been a constant increase of eDelivery AS4 conformant solutions. A conformant solution is a product offered by organisations or companies (third parties) to support eDelivery users. The goal of the eDelivery Conformance Testing service is to verify that an implementation of the eDelivery specifications, a software package either commercial or open source, conforms to the specifications of the eDelivery – either the eDelivery AS4 profile and/or the eDelivery SMP profile. The eDelivery service provides ready-to-use test cases, a testing platform, and support for the users during the entire testing process.
The previous conformance testing platform, called Minder, allowed for conformance testing of the eDelivery AS4 profile 1.15 Common Profile, two (out of six) profile enhancements, the ENTSOG usage profile and the eDelivery SMP profile 1.10. While the new platform initially contains the same tests and conformance statements as the current platform for the eDelivery AS4 profile, it will evolve over the next years to support the four missing profile enhancements and eventually the upcoming new eDelivery AS4 2.0 and SMP 2.0 specifications.
Overall, the new conformance testing platform represents a significant step forward for the eDelivery ecosystem and reinforces the commitment to build a vibrant eDelivery market outside the solutions provided by the building block itself. With its user-friendly interface and ability to accommodate evolving specifications, this platform promises to be an invaluable tool for eDelivery solution providers going forward.
You can read more about eDelivery Conformance Testing and find more information about the service on this page.
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The eDelivery Building Block
eDelivery is a building block that provides technical specifications and standards, installable software and ancillary services to allow projects to create a network of nodes for secure digital data exchange.
The eDelivery Conformance Testing service allows testing software products and services against the eDelivery specifications. The technical specifications are translated into test assertions, which are the main unit for testing and reporting the conformance of an implementation. Based on the test assertions, test cases are derived and implemented on the test platform in the form of executable test scripts. An implementation can only pass the conformance testing process in case all mandatory test assertions have been successfully completed. The outcome of the test execution is documented in a test report which is published alongside the name of the product in the pages displaying the eDelivery conformant solutions (AS4, SMP).
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