As software becomes increasingly pervasive, the need for quality and reliability in software systems continues to increase.  Model-based methods have been an important development in helping organizations build software with higher quality.  Prior to the development of the UML Testing Profile (UTP), UML (which is the most popular modeling language) did not have support for testing-related activities.   

The UTP provides extensions to UML to support the design, visualization, specification, analysis, construction, and documentation of the artifacts involved in testing.  It is independent of implementation languages and technologies, and can be applied in a variety of domains of development.   

In defining the UTP, the group of organizations who participated in its development had a core set of goals.

• Minimality - wherever possible, use constructs provided by UML directly.  This reduces the overhead necessary to learn and use the profile.

• Clarity - provide a clean separation of testing concepts that helps quality engineers perform there job and address complex concerns as easily as possible.

• Extensibility - create a generic profile that can be extended and applied to a variety of domains (e.g. telecommunications, traditional IT, aerospace) and technologies (e.g. J2EE, .NET)

This website provides up to date information about the profile, including new publications that describe its use, and a listing of tools that have implemented the profile.  If you have information about either papers, books, or tools related to the profile that are not listed here, please contact us at u2tp-info@fokus.fhg.de.