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<chapter>
  <header>
    <copyright>
      <year>2003</year><year>2016</year>
      <holder>Ericsson AB. All Rights Reserved.</holder>
    </copyright>
    <legalnotice>
      Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
      you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
      You may obtain a copy of the License at
 
          http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

      Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
      distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
      WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
      See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
      limitations under the License.
    
    </legalnotice>

    <title>Introduction</title>
    <prepared></prepared>
    <docno></docno>
    <date>2015-10-05</date>
    <rev></rev>
    <file>introduction.xml</file>
  </header>
   <section>
    <title>Scope</title>
      <p><c>Common Test</c> is a portable application for automated 
      testing. It is suitable for:</p>
      <list type="bulleted">
         <item><p>Black-box testing of target systems of any type (that
           is, not necessarily implemented in Erlang). This is performed
           through standard O&amp;M interfaces (such as SNMP, HTTP, CORBA,
           and Telnet) and, if necessary, through user-specific interfaces
           (often called test ports).</p></item>
         <item><p>White-box testing of Erlang/OTP programs. This is easily
           done by calling the target API functions directly from the test
           case functions.</p></item>
      </list>
      <p><c>Common Test</c> also integrates use of the OTP
      <seealso marker="tools:cover">cover</seealso> tool in application 
      <c>Tools</c> for code coverage analysis of Erlang/OTP programs.</p>
      
      <p><c>Common Test</c> executes test suite programs automatically,
      without operator interaction. Test progress and results are
      printed to logs in HTML format, easily browsed with a standard
      web browser. <c>Common Test</c> also sends notifications about progress
      and results through an OTP event manager to event handlers plugged
      in to the system. This way, users can integrate their own
      programs for, for example, logging, database storing, or supervision with
      <c>Common Test</c>.</p>

      <p><c>Common Test</c> provides libraries with useful support 
      functions to fill various testing needs and requirements. 
      There is, for example, support for flexible test declarations 
      through test specifications. There is also support 
      for central configuration and control of multiple 
      independent test sessions (to different target systems)
      running in parallel.</p>

  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Prerequisites</title>
    <p>It is assumed that the reader is familiar with the Erlang
      programming language.</p >
  </section>

</chapter>
