ABBET and industry-how to apply ABBET principles and make money doing it!

A Broad Based Environment for Test (ABBET) is a set of related standards being developed by industry and government experts to produce several results in the rapidly changing product test context. Specifically, the goals of the ABBET standards are to: (1) Reduce test program development time. (2) Increase test program accuracy and effectiveness. (3) Provide reusability of test code from one test software application to another. (4) Provide for specific instrument independence thus promoting rehost opportunities. The ABBET architecture is based on comprehensive Test Foundation Framework (TFF) which forms a foundation for each component standard, application specific frameworks, and application programs. The TFF is a categorized object-oriented class hierarchy which provides the objects and services necessary to fulfil the test requirements for a broad segment of the test industry. Test equipment vendors and system integrators currently utilize proprietary development architectures and methodologies to achieve test goals. Many of these facilities are based on Microsoft Windows using visual programming paradigm. This paper introduces the ABBET Test Foundation Framework by comparing it to the very successful Smalltalk-80 and Microsoft Foundation Class libraries. The aim of the paper is to show that the ABBET standards are aligned with the directions and goals being promoted now by instrument vendors, system integrators, and test system users.