Patrick Curran, JCP

Patrick Curran is Chair of the JCP. In this role he oversees the activities of the JCP Program Office including driving the process, managing its membership, guiding specification leads and experts through the process, leading the Executive Committee meetings, and managing the JCP.org web site

Patrick has worked in the software industry for more than 25 years, and at Sun (now Oracle) for almost 20 years. He has a long-standing record in conformance testing, and most recently led the Java Conformance Engineering team in Sun's Client Software Group. He was also chair of Sun's Conformance Council, which is responsible for defining Sun's policies and strategies around Java conformance and compatibility.

Patrick has participated actively in several consortia and communities including the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) (member of the W3C's Quality Assurance Working Group, co-chair of the W3C Quality Assurance Interest Group), and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS)(co-chair of the OASIS Test Assertions Guidelines Technical Committee). Patrick maintains a blog here.

Presentation: "Conformance testing and standards: how do you know it works if you don't know what it's supposed to do?"

Track: Solution Track: Wednesday

Time: Wednesday 13:45 - 14:45

Location: Wordsworth Room

Abstract:

This talk examines the critical role of conformance testing in the standards-development process. When conformance testing is performed well it can help to ensure the compatibility and interoperability of implementations. When performed badly, the consequences can be severe. Building on his experience in managing the development of extremely large Java conformance test suites, and as Chair of the Java Community Process organization, Patrick will discuss the importance of this specialized form of testing, explain its role within the JCP, and examine the practical difficulties of ensuring adequate test coverage.

Keywords: Java, Testing, Standards, Specifications, Conformance, Compatibility, Interoperability.

Target Audience: Anyone who develops or implement standards, or who depends on the compatibility and interoperability of such implementations.