Software developers can try out a testing tool designed by NIST to speed evaluations of how well programs work together in distributed manufacturing systems based on CORBA--the Common Object Request Broker Architecture advanced by an 800-member consortium.
In support of a project co-funded by the NIST Advanced Technology Program, the new Manufacturer's CORBA Interface Testing Toolkit, or MCITT, was developed initially to test components of a modular software framework that will enable integrated control of semiconductor manufacturing systems. It is now a stand-alone tool that can further other CORBA-based approaches to distributed manufacturing. Issued by the Massachusetts-based Object Management Group, CORBA is a publicly available specification for software integration. Its object-oriented approach to distributed computing systems promotes reuse of computer code and interoperability among software products.
With MCITT, a developer can evaluate the behavior of software components in a more controlled environment, without presuming correct operation of all the other components of the distributed manufacturing system, explains NIST computer scientist David Flater. MCITT creates emulated test servers that substitute for the real thing. The user defines a scenario of operations and interactions--such as between scheduling and ordering--and MCITT automatically attends to supporting programming jobs, such as memory management or generating "boilerplate" code.
A "pre-beta" release of MCITT can be downloaded over the Internet at ftp://ftp.cme.nist.gov/ pub/mcitt/.
For more information, contact David Flater, (301) 975-3350. A MCITT overview can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.mel.nist.gov/msidstaff/flater/mcitt.