NOTSCO (Not TOTSCO) One Touch Switching test platform (now launched)

I posted about how inept TOTSCO seem to be, and the call today with them was no improvement.

It seems they have test stages...

• A "simulator" to prove basic connectivity, well, sort of. See blog!
• Pre production (i.e. live with another CP, but not testing against the specification in any way).
• They may have a wider general pre-production stage as well.

They seem to be missing the obvious, a proper simulator platform that can simulate communications with another CP using TOTSCO, both ways. This has the aspect that the testing is against the spec, not against other CPs and their interpretation of the spec. It would be something to use whilst developing OTS for an ISP, and before going on to preproduction testing.

Missing link

So how do we address this missing link, a platform to test TOTSCO as if talking to another CP, but without actually doing so. Testing against the specification?

Well, we, like other CPs, I am sure, made some simple test systems before going to TOTSCO. But external testing is invaluable. Even if the external systems have it wrong in terms of following the spec (as long as they will fix it), they won't have the same errors as you have. The best external test would be TOTSCO, making a proper CP to CP simulator system.

But it does not exist - so, as you might expect, if you know me, I have made it, for free.

• No need to book test slot, just sign up and use for as little or as long as you need.
• Configure the responses you want to a match request.
• Send a match request with various options.
• Send and receive the various messages for a switching order.
• Send deliberately wrong messages to test your error checking.
• Test as you go, an ideal way to test your code as you develop it.
• Logging and reporting messages each way, in detail, with errors and warnings detected, quoting the specification and section that applies for anything it finds wrong.

From a privacy perspective, I am not expecting personal data to be stored, but we are deleting all test at the end of each day anyway. I did wonder about a report download option maybe.

Now launched

It is now launched at https://notsco.co.uk It took me a few days to create all this, about the same as it took TOTSCO to actually reply when we asked to go on pre-production testing (and they still have not actually set that up). Thank you all for your patience.

Discussions, bugs, feature requests - on GitHub please.

I have told TOTSCO about it as well...