Introduction

Whether you are a supplier who requires conformance certification for an industry standard or an in-house software development organization, The Open Group's Test Suites provide valuable assistance in improving product quality, reducing costs and minimizing time-to-market.

Delivering Assurance of Conformance and Interoperability

The Test Suites are an essential aid for:

• proper development and maintenance of standards-based products
  
• ensuring conformance of products to standard APIs
  
• application portability and interoperability
  

Suppliers who use The Open Group's test suites will find that conformance testing of platforms and middleware greatly reduces the cost of developing and maintaining multi-platform application software. A further benefit is that testing increases customer satisfaction and keeps development and support costs in check.

The bonus for end customers is that supplier products are more likely to reduce integration costs and protect their investments in applications, software and people.

The Open Group provides the most reliable, respected, and complete set of API conformance test suites used by major IT supplier today.

Reduced Software Development Costs

Many in-house software development projects will benefit from using the Test Suites.

The key advantages are:

• Enabling significant savings in engineering costs by integrating regular regression tests into the development and quality assurance processes, thereby identifying defects early. 
  
• Reducing the cost of developing and maintaining multi-platform application software.
  
• Providing the best indicator available of conformance to industry-agreed standards.
  
• Delivering low cost testing as a result of being automated, so they can be re-run regularly and cost-effectively, and based on either TETware – the industry standard test framework or The Open Group's XML based test engine.
  
• Providing high quality assertion-based tests that have been independently developed and aligned to the IEEE POSIX 1003.3 test methods.
  

Test Suites for Conformance Certification

Test Suites are available for many of The Open Group Product Standards and other industry standards such as POSIX®, the LSB^tm and the WAP specifications. Under the terms of the formal certification programs, test results submitted for certification must be produced using the latest versions of the relevant Test Suite(s).

After certification, most of the formal certification programs may request that additional test results be submitted for the certified product. As with initial certification, the test results must be produced with current versions of the Test Suite(s). To receive these versions, the supplier must have test suite license and support agreements in place.

Test Suite Agreements

Use of the test suite software is covered by a Test Suite License Agreement. Support and maintenance is provided under a separate Test Suite Support & Maintenance Agreement. Fees for the Test Suites are separate from the Certification Program fees.

License Agreement

The License Agreement gives the customer a license to use the test software in-house. Typically, the license is valid for 10 years, but other terms are available, including periods as little as one month for The Open Group's online WAP test suites. For most of the test suites, usage may be on a Corporate-wide basis or only at a Single User location. The License fee is paid at the beginning of the license period. No further fees apply until the end of the license term, at which point the customer may choose to renew or terminate the license.

Support and Maintenance Agreement

Under these terms, The Open Group provides an Error Report service and software support, as well as regular maintenance releases of the test suites which provides the customer with the most current version. There is an annual support fee for each test suite and the Agreement automatically renews unless cancelled by either party in advance of the anniversary.

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