Testbed
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (May 2016) |
A testbed (also spelled test bed) is a platform for conducting rigorous, transparent, and replicable testing of scientific theories, computational tools, and new technologies.
The term is used across many disciplines to describe experimental research and new product development platforms and environments. They may vary from hands-on prototype development in manufacturing industries such as automobiles (known as "mules"), aircraft engines or systems and to intellectual property refinement in such fields as computer software development shielded from the hazards of testing live.
Software development[]
In software development, testbedding is a method of testing a particular module (function, class, or library) in an isolated fashion. It may be used as a proof of concept or when a new module is tested apart from the program/system it will later be added to. A skeleton framework is implemented around the module so that the module behaves as if already part of the larger program.
A typical testbed could include software, hardware, and networking components. In software development, the specified hardware and software environment can be set up as a testbed for the application under test[dubious ]. In this context, a testbed is also known as the test environment.
Testbeds are also pages on the Internet where the public are given the opportunity to test CSS or HTML they have created and want to preview the results, for example:
- The Arena web browser was created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and CERN for testing HTML3, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), Portable Network Graphics (PNG) and the libwww.[1][2] Arena was replaced by Amaya to test new web standards.[3]
- The Line Mode browser got a new function to interact with the libwww library as a sample and test application.[4]
- The libwww was also created to test network protocols which are under development or to experiment with new protocols.[5]
Aircraft development[]
In aircraft development there are also examples of testbed use like in development of new aircraft engines when these are fitted to a testbed aircraft for flight testing.[6][7]
See also[]
References[]
- ^ QingLong, Lu. "The Arena Web Browser". . Archived from the original on February 5, 2003. Retrieved 6 June 2010.
- ^ "Web working group - Minutes "Navigation, services and interoperability" session". World Wide Web Working group. Retrieved 9 June 2010.
- ^ "History of the Web". Oxford Brookes University. 2002. Archived from the original on 29 December 2003. Retrieved 10 May 2016.
- ^ Nielsen, Henrik Frystyk (4 May 1998). "WWW - The Libwww Line Mode Browser". World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved 9 June 2010.
- ^ "libwww". ROS. Retrieved 2 June 2010.
- ^ Guy Norris (7 June 2013). "GE's new 747 flying testbed colors". Aviation Week. Retrieved 26 April 2016.
- ^ "Lancaster Test Bed Images". Avro Lancaster. Retrieved 26 April 2016.
External links[]
- PlanetLab Europe, the European portion of the publicly available PlanetLab testbed
- CMU's eRulemaking Testbed
- US National Science Foundation GENI - Global Environment for Network Innovations Initiative
- Helsinki Testbed (meteorology)
- Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) IP1 test bed
 | This computer science article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by . |
- Hardware testing
- Software testing
- Computer science stubs