About Markus Eisele
Back in May Oracle awarded a Compatibility Testing Scholarship to the Eclipse Foundation. This got some attention in media during the last days and I just wanted to make sure that I shine some light on the whole process and the action in detail. What does look like a simple and honest gift on first sight actually has more aspects in it. But lets start at the beginning:
Technology Compatibility Kit
Covered by the Java Community Process (JCP) both Java as a language and the various platforms on top (Java SE, Java EE, Java ME) are developed. Each JSR (Java Specification Request) includes an EG (Expert Group) a bunch of documents and of course a reference implementation (RI) and a corresponding TCK (Technology Compatibility Kit). The TCK can be executed against implementations and checks them for compliance with the specification. So it basically is the code equivalent of the specification document. Most TCKs consist of a bunch of test cases as well as a “test harness” which executes the tests. If there is a TCK per JSR it is safe to assume that there are at least as many TCKs available as we have active JSRs in the JCP. But that is only a theoretical thought. Practically there aren’t. At least not publicly avaiable. Besides JBatch, CDI and Bean Validation I can’t think of much more. And those are only part of the Java EE platform which has at least 28 specifications. The majority of TCKs unfortunately is under lock and key at Oracle. But why? The main reason for this is that the TCKs are also used as a tools for the platform certification. Successfully running a TCK against an implementation proves it’s correctness and with that somehow it’s compliance.
Source : http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2013/08/two-tcks-for-eclipse-what-is-really-in-it-for-open-source.html
