Definitions

Center of Excellence: Generally a team of 2+ expert Conformiq Creator users in a Conformiq Creator deployment within a company or program who are an easy to reach the first line of support for any user in the program regarding any question of to install, use, model, troubleshoot etc with Conformiq Creator. They have a direct link to Conformiq Creator support where they can escalate any issues they are unsure how to resolve. At same time they are the main and central contact point for Conformiq into the deployment. They assess Creator releases before they are deployed into a program and are usually involved in the Creator Beta release program. They usually also oversee education and certification materials, and on occasion train users.

[Conformiq] Workbench (aka Conformiq Eclipse Client): The graphical user interface of Conformiq Creator which the user sees when starting Creator. It is used to run integrations, do modeling, launch test generation, review generated test, and export tests.

[Conformiq] Computation Server: A set of processes separate from the Workbench (more concretely one master and number of slave processes) running (without a GUI) in the background which perform the actual test generation. The computation server master process communicates in the background with the Workbench. By default that process is started by the Workbench on the same machine as the Workbench (local). The Workbench can also be configured to connect to a Computation Server which is started separately on another machine (remote or Conformiq Grid).

Model: A model is the collection of all activity and structure diagrams (and linked Excel spreadsheets) in the “model” folder of a specific Conformiq Creator project.

Advanced Test Generation Concepts: A collection of modeling constructs and test generation options which increases test generation complexity and time. Modeling constructs that have a significant impact on test generation complexity are the use of the combinatorial action, data coverage settings in input action constraints, as well as action input constraints referring to spreadsheets with a large number of rows. Conformiq Project Options that affect test generation time are the advanced Conformiq Project Options “Enable Only Finalized Runs”, “Enable Data Distribution”, as well as the “Maximum Lookahead Depth” setting.

Lookahead Depth: An advanced test generation concept that controls how far the test generation engine “looks ahead” in its quest of exploring an (infinite) state space of possibilities, i.e., the depth in terms of input actions in which model logic is analyzed to select and reason about test data values. Starting from Creator 2.4 lookahead depth is handled automatically during test generation – in previous versions lookahead depth had to be managed manually by users.

Test Selection (aka Test Optimization): The third phase of test generation which optimizes generated tests based on a selected test selection option. In the first phase of test generation, existing tests are analyzed for the validity after model changes (if any). In the second phase, the engine explores an infinite space of possibilities in the attempt to cover all selected test targets. In the third phase, the pool of the generated tests (commonly thousands) is reduced based on the test selection option selected by the user in Conformiq Project options to the final set displayed as “valid tests” to the user. By default, generated tests are reduced to the fewest tests that cover the achieved coverage.

Incremental Test Generation: Test generation that considers in the first phase of test generation all valid existing tests as a basis for further test generation. All Conformiq test generation products provide incremental test generation.

Deterministic Test Generation: The ability to always generate the exact same tests from the same model with same test generation settings and same test target settings with the same tool version – even when using distributed test generation. All Conformiq test generation products provide deterministic test generation.

Distributed Test Generation: The ability to use multiple processor cores, machines, or nodes forgenerating tests from a model. Conformiq has unique test generation technology that allows parallelize test generation and to decrease test generation time significantly by providing more processing power while still providing deterministic test generation results. All Conformiq test generation products use distributed test generation.

Conformiq Grid: A Conformiq product which is essentially a special version of a Computation Server that can manage and balance effectively connections and test computation requests from multiple users (i.e., Conformiq Creator Eclipse clients) across multiple machines – both local or in the cloud. Conformiq Grid enables all connected users to see and benefit from all of the machines, e.g., users see two 32 GB 8 core machines as if each had a 64 GB 16 core machine for distributed test generation available.