The European Community Euro Fighter military Aircraft (EFA) is characterized by the computer equipment and the bus, whose purpose is to govern several aircraft functions (navigation, combat, equipment etc.). Four countries (Italy, Germany, Spain, UK), external suppliers and hundreds of people including engineers and computer scientists are involved in the project development..

The devices (LRI) communicate with each other by sending and receiving transactions, exchanged via buses, that transport command and data messages. A message is a structure that may be compared to a record, sometimes very complex, that contains the variable quantity - from tens to hundreds - of signals.

Each LRI consists of boards (supplied by third parties) that must be thoroughly tested prior to become operative. The tests are complex and may take years. Usually, a board or a device undergoes several levels of testing. Among others, there are integration tests carried out on the testing benches (RIG). These tests are taken to verify the correct behavior of a system when it receives certain messages from other devices. To do this, particular test configurations that simulate a specific behavior of the unit are created. In this configurations, one or more organ systems (those subject to testing) is real, while the other equipment, needed for the test, is simulated by calculation models (programs) . Both messages, that required for the test configuration and the configuration itself, are described by the XML configuration file.

A series of tests is undergone before proceeding to the test benches. The results are later analyzed by other applications, designed for this purpose. For years these tests were carried out by companies from four countries, supported by the LRI a, LRI b, LRI c programs developed locally, without having an "overall testing view". Needless to say, the comparison of results was difficult. For this reason, MaTE (Model and Test Environment) was put in place in 2001. Its purpose is to provide a common methodology for defining test configurations in order to have the same result against the same input, regardless of the country that performs the test.

The application has also been developed by four joinTeam companies (for Italy - Alenia Aeronautica). The part of the MaTE to be developed by Alenia Aeronautica is the Data Repository (DR). MaTE DR is a database with a graphical interface; the application defines and maintains the configurations, automatically generates XML files needed for testing. This DB contains the other one (developed by the other working group) which gathers all the signals that compose messages and are exchanged among LRIs. Due to the number of messages needed in a test configuration and due to the need to process ICD signals to make them MaTE-compatible, the generation of XML files can take hours.

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