DGI offers a two-fold approach to conformance testing services depending on the target context of the standards and the industry communities expected to benefit from the testing program. The first approach is a pure conformance testing method in which software implementations of a standard are tested against a reference engine or platform that confirms the implementation is in compliance with the standard. Another conformance testing approach used by DGI is a program executed in the context of preparing for interoperability testing.
The difference between conformance and interoperability testing is a subtle but important distinction. Conformance testing confirms that a software implementation of a standard conforms to the standard by testing the implementation against some reference implementation. Interoperability testing confirms that two or more software implementations of the same standard can demonstrate interoperable communication amongst themselves. Interoperability testing will catch errors with inconsistent implementations that conformance testing may miss, particularly for complex standards for which conformance only testing may be difficult to simulate as-deployed scenarios.
For less complex standards, conformance-only testing programs are sufficient to adequately certify an implementation's conformance to a standard. DGI performs conformance testing of implementations against a variety of different reference platforms depending on the standard being tested. For some specifications, the standards body provides conformance testing tools. For others, testing engines need to be developed and subjected to rigorous auditing and testing to establish a reference conformance platform. Still others rely on mature implementations to act as the gold standard by which conformance is measured.
Within the context of more complex specifications that require the extra step of interoperability testing to certify a group of implementations, conformance testing is used to pre-test software new to the DGI interoperability testing program. Conformance testing readies these new implementations for the next scheduled full matrix interoperability certification. For specifications that require interoperability testing, it is often cumbersome to maintain a separate conformance-only engine and testing platform. Building new and independent conformance engines generally is very expensive and labor intensive, and becomes itself another piece of software to maintain with version changes and updates as the standard evolves. Most industries have found it very difficult to recoup any funds spent on these endeavors, especially since it does not ensure full matrix interoperability. For conformance pre-testing ahead of interoperability testing, it is common to perform conformance testing against an existing, mature, and certified interoperable implementation of the standard.
Whether a specification requires conformance-only testing or a more thorough full-matrix interoperability testing program, DGI has the tools and expertise to confirm and certify software compliance and interoperability regardless of the complexity of the standards.
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