SAFIRE Professional

Integrated Development & Run-Time Environment for Signaling Systems.

Overview

SAFIRE Professional is a fully integrated development & run-time environment optimized for the implementation, validation & observation of signaling systems. It is used for a wide range of applications, such as gateways, signaling testers & protocol analyzers.

With over a decade of experience in the industry, the SAFIRE team has created a powerful, innovative tool chain based on international standards, such as UML, SDL, MSC, ASN.1 & TTCN (ITU-T, ETSI, ANSI, ISO).

SAFIRE Professional has an easy-to-learn graphical development environment for quickly creating, editing & building signaling systems, test harnesses & test suites.

With SAFIRE’s advanced testing features, signaling systems can be validated to various levels of confidence, from top-level tests to detailed conformance tests according to international standards.

SAFIRE tests are automated, deterministic, reproducible & documented.

For the observation of signaling systems, SAFIRE has a built-in protocol analyzer. It is able to capture system internal signaling events, as well as signaling traffic from live networks, using SAFIRE compatible probes & 3rd party applications. The captured events are decoded, formatted & presented according to configurable protocol stacks.

There are SAFIRE compatible libraries, test suites, drivers & hardware available for a wide range of signaling systems, including mobile, internet, aerospace & trunk networks.

The SAFIRE Professional tool chain has a modular architecture:

• SAFIRE Designer - graphical editor, viewer, compiler
• SAFIRE Campaigner - test execution & report generator
• SAFIRE Animator - slow motion replay (actions, events, behavior)
• SAFIRE Tracer - protocol analyzer
• SAFIRE Organizer - version control & project management
• SAFIRE VM Virtual Machine - high performance virtual machine

The Tracer, Organizer & Virtual Machine are part of SAFIRE RTE; please refer to the SAFIRE RTE datasheet for details.

Key Features

SAFIRE Designer

• Graphical design of state machines & test suites
• Intuitive, colorful, auto-prompting, auto-layout
• System architecture; instances, connections, interfaces
• Flow charts; inputs, outputs, actions, decisions, timers, state transitions
• State-transition diagrams; states & possible paths between them
• State-input matrix; states & coverage of possible input events
• Arrow diagrams; input events, timers & outputs
• Copy/paste diagrams to Microsoft applications

SAFIRE Campaigner

• Automated execution of tests
• Create, edit, manage & execute test campaigns
• Configuration of parameters (PICs & PIXIT)
• Test report with verdicts (pass, fail & inconclusive)
• Conditional auto-repeat

SAFIRE Animator

• Slow motion, step-by-step replay of executed actions
• 3D synchronized view (Animator, Tracer & Viewer)
• Works with both state machines and test suites

SAFIRE Tracer (Part of SAFIRE RTE)

• Protocol analyzer with 1000’s of specifications supported
• Capture, view, filter, trigger, count, search, store

SAFIRE Organizer (Part of SAFIRE RTE)

• Version control, dependencies (using & used-by)
• Project build & launch
• Configuration manager (MIB)

SAFIRE VM Virtual Machine (Part of SAFIRE RTE)

• High performance virtual machine for signaling systems
• Direct execution, no code-generation needed
• Performance/memory statistics & diagnostics

Description

SAFIRE Professional has been designed for the implementation, validation & observation of signaling systems, i.e. event-driven state machines (FSMs).

SAFIRE has advanced features for the implementation of signaling systems, test harnesses & test suites building around the concepts of states, events and timers.  Low-level issues are hidden, allowing users to work with design relevant information at the highest level.

Implementation

The colorful, graphical representation is intuitive with auto-layout and auto-prompting, context-sensitive editing; the SAFIRE Designer presents the valid options relevant at any point and uses the same colors for the same items everywhere, whether system or user-defined.

The Designer allows signaling systems to be viewed in several different ways, each one always up-to-date and automatically generated:

• The system architecture shows the state machine instances, their nesting, the connections between them and their interfaces.
• The behavior of individual state machines is presented clearly as a flow chart including input events, outputs, actions, decisions, timers & resulting state transitions.
• The state-transition diagrams show the different states & all possible paths between the states, i.e. driven by input events.
• The state-input matrix presents all the states & the corresponding coverage of possible input events, i.e. highlighting which events are not handled.
• The arrow diagrams are an alternative view of the behavior showing input events, timers & outputs as arrows between the different FSMs

The entire SAFIRE tool chain is fully integrated using the same concepts, graphical representation, notation & data for the implementation, validation and observation of signaling systems.

Any diagram in the graphical representation can be copied to Microsoft applications, such as Word and PowerPoint.

Signaling systems implemented in SAFIRE can be immediately executed in the high performance SAFIRE RTE run-time environment (please refer to the SAFIRE RTE datasheet for more details).

Internal & external signaling events can be captured non-intrusively and analyzed on-line using the SAFIRE Tracer and its vast library of international, national & proprietary specifications.

The run-time behavior of a signaling system can also be analyzed off-line, without altering the timing characteristics, using the SAFIRE Animator, which allows a slow-motion, step-by-step replay (forwards & backwards) with synchronized views of actions, the captured signaling events & flow chart behavior.

Validation

SAFIRE validates signaling systems using test harnesses running test scenarios, which are implemented using the same flow chart graphical representation as the signaling systems themselves. There are no additional languages or tools to learn.

Related test scenarios can be defined and managed as test suites, and the SAFIRE Campaigner allows test scenarios to be selected for test campaigns and automatically executed.

The Campaigner runs test campaigns without human involvement and SAFIRE based tests meet the ISO requirements for conformance tests; tests are automated, deterministic, reproducible & documented.

Test campaigns can be automatically repeated for stress tests.

Information specific to individual test objects, such as phone numbers & services, can be configured without editing the test suites.

Test results are updated during execution and can be saved for later analysis or exported as an HTML report for Internet publication.

As with signaling systems, the SAFIRE Tracer captures all signaling traffic to & from the test object, at the interface to the test scenario, at any point in the test harness protocol sub-stack and at the interface to the test object.

The SAFIRE Animator can be launched from the Campaigner for a slow-motion, step-by-step, replay of any test executed. The Animator jumps directly to the points where test verdicts are set, allowing rapid analysis of the events leading up to a pass/fail result.

Observation

Signaling systems and test harnesses can be observed non-intrusively at run-time from the same specification-centric viewpoint used for implementation & validation.

Signaling events are captured and presented using the original human-readable format used in their definition. SAFIRE directly supports ASN.1, used in many international protocol specifications; no other tools are necessary.

SAFIRE can also be used to observe the run-time behavior of external, target or 3rd party signaling systems using monitoring points in the signaling systems or SAFIRE compatible physical interfaces.

Specifications & References

Specifications subject to change without notice. All product and company names are trademarks of their respective owners.
© 1990-2008 Northern Venture Ltd (SAFIRE World).  All rights reserved.