Test & Performance Tools Platform (TPTP) Project Plan Summary the open community driving the eclipse platform

Frozen version for the Eclipse Roadmap v1.0, last revised February 16, 2005.
The most current version of this document is available on the TPTP website.

Executive Summary of Current Plan

The Eclipse TPTP Project is currently working on three releases as follows:

Release*	Target Release Date	Description
TPTP 3.0.2	18-Mar-05	Maintenance release delivered in support of the Eclipse Platform 3.0.2 maintenance release Targeted for legacy adopters of TPTP 3.0.x who require various fixes, but are unable to adopt a new TPTP major/minor release in this timeframe.
TPTP 3.3.0 (January 31, 2005)	16-May-05	Feature release based on the Eclipse Platform 3.0.x release Targeted for legacy adopters of TPTP who require additional TPTP features/fixes, but are not able to move to the Eclipse Platform 3.1 release in this timeframe.
TPTP 4.0.0 (January 31, 2005)	27-June-05	Feature release based on the Eclipse Platform 3.1.0 release Targeted for new TPTP adopters and legacy adopters who require additional TPTP features/fixes and are ready to move to the Eclipse Platform 3.1.0 release; TPTP 4.0.0 includes TPTP 3.3.0 and prior features/fixes.

* Follow links above for access to the respective release plan summaries.

Our general release philosophy is to release TPTP coincident with Eclipse Platform releases and provide more frequent interim releases as applicable.  This generally translates to an annual major release in June, quarterly minor releases thereafter (September, December, March), and maintenance releases as needed. 

In addition to the above releases approved by the TPTP PMC and Planning Group, we have recently commenced the planning cycle for our follow-on TPTP 4.1 minor release targeted for September 2005 and we will publish such plan information when available.

Details of the current plan(s) can be found at:

• Planning and execution information at TPTP Development Plans
• Architecture plan at TPTP Architecture Plan.

Forward Looking Statement

The TPTP PMC adopted and specialized the following Eclipse Themes and Priorities which represent the key focus areas for TPTP enhancements in releases for the year ahead:

• Scaling Up - TPTP will work to enhance the support of large data volumes and processing rates in areas such as data collection, user interface and in the persistence of trace, log and statistical models and execution histories.

• Enterprise Ready - Hooks will be provided within the TPTP infrastructure to link testing tools to requirements tracking tools and defect tracking tools, thus embedding them effectively in enterprise development cycles. Changes to the data collection layers will increase interoperability with enterprise security infrastructure. In addition, there will be progressive adoption of the TPTP tools and infrastructure as a test platform for the project itself, which is in turn likely to drive refinements into the tools. An increased focus on whole-project integration testing will ensure effective interoperability amongst all TPTP components and the rest of the Eclipse environment.

• Design for Extensibility: Be a Better Platform - There will be a wide range of activities within TPTP to externalize APIs and define extension points, making the infrastructure more flexible, and more generic in application.

• Simple to Use - The existing TPTP tools were conceived as samples, rather than as exemplary, they are deficient in many areas of usability and in some cases lacking in function. The plan is that within the domains which they target they will provide a high-quality user experience out of the box. We will focus on ease of use through enhanced user documentation, tutorials, white papers, demonstrations, and a wide range of enhancements to the user interface to streamline basic processes and clarify concepts and terminology.

• Enable Consistent Multi-language Support - In TPTP a significant effort will be applied in extending coverage of the trace models to represent C/C++ programs and to handle protocol activity (specifically HTTP) consistently with program activity. There will also be C/C++ APIs provided to the data collection and control layers.

• Appealing to the Broader Community - A range of initiatives will be taken to broaden the community of potential and actual users of TPTP. Technically this will include additional integration of open source test tool technologies based on JUnit, and the various hooks to JUnit in the JDT, more data collection agents – particularly focusing on open source technologies, and additional operating system and hardware platforms from which data can be collected. There will be additional marketing and an extensive outreach program to the Eclipse community for additional contribution and adoption.

We are tracking and supporting the following standards and projects:

• We support the OMG UML2 Test Profile and have implemented an early draft of the model. We are assessing the need to change our test model in a future release. Additionally, our members have participated in the definition of the OMG effort to define this model.
• We provide an implementation of Common Base Event which is currently a proposed standard submission to Oasis. Once approved we will implement the changes needed to comply with the specification. We also provide an adaptor for the Eclipse Platform so that all Eclipse tools can become producers of this logging format and leverage our analysis tooling.
• In a future release we intend to provide a JVMTI (JSR 163) based data collector to replace our current JVMPI agent. We are currently pursuing contributors to get this into our plans. This will improve the install experience as well as improve our coexistence with other infrastructure tooling.
• We are actively working with the Eclipse Platform team support to add support for logical resources and record based resources in order to provide more enterprise and scalable team solutions. This is in line with JSR 147 (logical and record resources) and JSR 170 (logical resources).
• We are also driving extension of our testing and execution frameworks based on other de facto based standards that derive from JUnit, such as HTTPUnit and Abbot.

The following illustration summarizes TPTP recent releases and roadmap (TPTP Approved/Pending status refers to TPTP PMC and Planning Group approval status):

For more information, visit the Eclipse Test and Performance Tools Platform (TPTP) Project website.