Novell Inc, Digital Equipment Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co are making the running to be first to achieve Unix branding for their operating systems in accordance with X/Open Co Ltd Spec 1170 requirements. Officially, the companies have been alpha testing the suite chosen by X/Open to perform Spec 1170 evaluation that will determine eligibility for use of the Unix brand. The test suite, which is being provided by 88Open spin-out Applied Testing & Technology Inc, San Jose, California will go to into beta test in September, with general availability from November, by which time the three should have completed their operating system testing. Meanwhile, sources say ApTest, which also supplies suites to the Precision RISC Organisation, has won the latest X/Open contract to provide a suite that will be used to test conformance with the Object Management Group’s Common Object Request Broker Architecture. For this, ApTest is expected to use a more robust version of the Assertion Definition Language, developed by Sun Labs for X/Open with funding from Japan’s Ministry International of Trade & Industry. Current indicators are that ApTest’s binary-level testing mechanisms may be brought together with the UK Defence Research Agency’s TenDRA source-level applications software testing mechanism to provide an overall testing framework.
