Ericsson evaluation finds Quviq QuickCheck can deliver substantial savings

22 Aug 2007

An evaluation of QuickCheck performed at Ericsson's site in Kista has found that QuickCheck can deliver substantial savings. QuickCheck was used to test part of the functionality of Ericsson’s 3G Radio Base Station, specifically configuring radio links using the 3GPP standard NBAP protocol. As well as finding a number of problems in the software under test, the authors studied similar problems discovered at a late stage (or even in the field), that QuickCheck would almost certainly have found earlier. They estimate the cost savings of doing so at over 60%. The report concludes that QuickCheck is “well suited” for testing these types of systems; that it offers an “excellent possibility” to generate complex message sequences, which combined with shrinking, is “impressive functionality”; and that “test cases written using QuickCheck are easier to maintain”, thanks to considerably smaller code than traditional test suites. Moreover, QuickCheck can, quite simply, find errors that are infeasible to find by conventional testing.

A report on the evaluation is available from Linköping University.