Consensus testing of electronic system

1. A tester for testing an electronic system, comprising:

a traffic interface to receive traffic from a test of an electronic system;

an element comparator to extract a value from an element of the traffic and to compare the extracted element value with an element value obtained from another test of another electronic system; and

a test result generator to generate consensus information on an interoperability of the electronic system, based on comparing the extracted element values of the electronic system with the element values obtained from the other test of the other electronic system.

2. The tester of claim 1 , further comprising a test interface to receive predetermined test cases and their inputs.

3. The tester of claim 2 , further comprising storage to save the test cases and their inputs.

4. The tester of claim 2 , further comprising an input interface to feed an input of a test case into the electronic system, and an output interface to receive an output of the test case from the electronic system.

5. The tester of claim 1 , further comprising an element analyser to decompose the traffic into elements.

6. The tester of claim 5 , wherein the element analyser further selects a portion of the elements for the element comparator.

7. The tester of claim 6 , wherein the element analyser performs the selection automatically.

8. The tester of claim 7 , wherein the automatic selection by the element analyser is based on the number of different elements in the traffic, the number of different element values in the traffic, the frequency of different elements in the traffic, the frequency of different element values in the traffic, the importance or other weight value set for an element, and/or the location of an element in a message.

9. The tester of claim 5 , wherein the tester further comprises an interface to receive a selection of an element from a user of the tester.

10. The tester of claim 5 , further comprising a storage to save decomposition information on the decomposition of the traffic into the elements.

11. The tester of claim 1 , wherein the test result generator further comprises a consensus vote calculator to give a vote to each value an element has, so that the compared element value used by most of the electronic systems gets most of the votes.

12. The tester of claim 11 , wherein the consensus vote calculator further gives a consensus strength to a test case, based on the vote distribution for an element of the test case.

13. The tester of claim 12 , wherein the consensus vote calculator further gives a strong consensus value to the consensus strength if there is a single dominant compared element value, a weak consensus value to the consensus strength if there are a few dominant compared element values, and a no consensus value to the consensus strength if there are many compared element values.

14. The tester of claim 13 , further comprising storage to save for each test case the consensus strength value, the compared element values which were voted for, the number of votes per compared element value, and as a consensus value the single dominant compared element value if the consensus strength has the strong consensus value.

15. The tester of claim 13 , wherein the test result generator further comprises a test verdict assigner to give a test verdict to the test case regarding the electronic system, based on information about the compared elements and the consensus strength values.

16. The tester of claim 15 , wherein the test verdict assigner further gives a passed value to the test verdict if the test case has the strong consensus value for the consensus strength and the element value is the same as the single dominant compared element value, a failed value to the test verdict if the test case has the strong consensus value for the consensus strength but the element value of the electronic system is not the same as the single dominant compared element value, and an inconclusive value to the test verdict if the test case has the weak consensus value or no consensus value for the consensus strength.

17. The tester of claim 15 , wherein the test verdict assigner gives as the result the number of votes received by the compared element value that the electronic system has.

18. The tester of claim 15 , wherein the test verdict assigner evaluates an aggregate test case including more than one vote so that it gives a passed value if all sub-verdicts are passed, an inconclusive value if any of the sub-verdicts is inconclusive, and a failed value otherwise.

19. The tester of claim 1 , wherein the tester tests an electronic system including software implementing formatted data input and output,

20. An arrangement for testing an electronic system, comprising:

means for receiving traffic from a test of an electronic system;

means for extracting a value from an element of the traffic and to compare the extracted element value with an element value obtained from another test of another electronic system; and

means for generating consensus information on an interoperability of the electronic system, based on comparing the extracted element values of the electronic system with the element values obtained from the other test of the other electronic system.

21. A computer program product embodied on a distribution storage medium for testing an electronic system, comprising:

a traffic interface module to receive traffic from a test of an electronic system;

an element comparator module to extract a value from an element of the traffic and to compare the extracted element value with an element value obtained from another test of another electronic system; and

a test result generator module to generate consensus information on an interoperability of the electronic system, based on comparing the extracted element values of the electronic system with the element values obtained from the other test of the other electronic system.

22. A method for testing an electronic system, comprising:

receiving traffic from a test of an electronic system;

extracting a value from an element of the traffic and comparing the extracted element value with an element value obtained from another test of another electronic system; and

generating consensus information on an interoperability of the electronic system, based on comparing the extracted element values of the electronic system with the element values obtained from the other test of the other electronic system.