ETSI GS CIM 014 V3.1.1 (2025-07)

Context Information Management (CIM); NGSI-LD Test Suite

RGS/CIM-0014v311

General Information

• Status: Not Published
• Technical Committee: CIM - cross-cutting Context Information Management
• Current Stage: 12 - Citation in the OJ (auto-insert)
• Due Date: 16-Jun-2025
• Completion Date: 30-Jul-2025

Standards Content (Sample)

GROUP SPECIFICATION
Context Information Management (CIM);
NGSI-LD Test Suite
Disclaimer
The present document has been produced and approved by the cross-cutting Context Information Management (CIM) ETSI
Industry Specification Group (ISG) and represents the views of those members who participated in this ISG.
It does not necessarily represent the views of the entire ETSI membership.

2 ETSI GS CIM 014 V3.1.1 (2025-07)

Reference
RGS/CIM-0014v311
Keywords
API, IoT, NGSI-LD, testing
ETSI
650 Route des Lucioles
F-06921 Sophia Antipolis Cedex - FRANCE

Tel.: [phone]  Fax: [phone]

Siret N° 348 623 562 00017 - APE 7112B
Association à but non lucratif enregistrée à la
Sous-Préfecture de Grasse (06) N° w061004871

Important notice
The present document can be downloaded from the
ETSI Search & Browse Standards application.
The present document may be made available in electronic versions and/or in print. The content of any electronic and/or
print versions of the present document shall not be modified without the prior written authorization of ETSI. In case of any
existing or perceived difference in contents between such versions and/or in print, the prevailing version of an ETSI
deliverable is the one made publicly available in PDF format on ETSI deliver repository.
Users should be aware that the present document may be revised or have its status changed,
this information is available in the Milestones listing.
If you find errors in the present document, please send your comments to
the relevant service listed under Committee Support Staff.
If you find a security vulnerability in the present document, please report it through our
Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure (CVD) program.
Notice of disclaimer & limitation of liability
The information provided in the present deliverable is directed solely to professionals who have the appropriate degree of
experience to understand and interpret its content in accordance with generally accepted engineering or
other professional standard and applicable regulations.
No recommendation as to products and services or vendors is made or should be implied.
No representation or warranty is made that this deliverable is technically accurate or sufficient or conforms to any law
and/or governmental rule and/or regulation and further, no representation or warranty is made of merchantability or fitness
for any particular purpose or against infringement of intellectual property rights.
In no event shall ETSI be held liable for loss of profits or any other incidental or consequential damages.

Any software contained in this deliverable is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, express or implied, including but not
limited to, the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement of intellectual property
rights and ETSI shall not be held liable in any event for any damages whatsoever (including, without limitation, damages
for loss of profits, business interruption, loss of information, or any other pecuniary loss) arising out of or related to the use
of or inability to use the software.
Copyright Notification
No part may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and
microfilm except as authorized by written permission of ETSI.
The content of the PDF version shall not be modified without the written authorization of ETSI.
The copyright and the foregoing restriction extend to reproduction in all media.

© ETSI 2025.
All rights reserved.
ETSI
3 ETSI GS CIM 014 V3.1.1 (2025-07)
Contents
Intellectual Property Rights . 4
Foreword . 4
Modal verbs terminology . 4
Executive summary . 4
Introduction . 4
1 Scope . 6
2 References . 6
2.1 Normative references . 6
2.2 Informative references . 6
3 Definition of terms, symbols and abbreviations . 7
3.1 Terms . 7
3.2 Symbols . 7
3.3 Abbreviations . 7
4 Abstract Test Method (ATM) . 7
4.1 Test Architecture . 7
4.2 Test source code structure . 8
4.2.1 Folder Structures . 8
4.2.2 Data folder . 9
4.2.3 TP folder . 9
4.2.4 Libraries . 9
4.2.5 Resources folder . 9
4.2.6 Doc folder . 11
4.3 Test interfaces . 11
4.4 Test framework components . 12
4.5 Test strategy . 12
4.6 Notable External Libraries . 13
4.6.0 Foreword . 13
4.6.1 HttpCtrl library for Robot Framework . 13
5 Untestable Test Purposes. 14
Annex A (informative): Robot library modules . 15
A.1 Robot code repository . 15
Annex B (informative): Bibliography . 16
Annex C (informative): Change history . 17
History . 18

ETSI
4 ETSI GS CIM 014 V3.1.1 (2025-07)
Intellectual Property Rights
Essential patents
IPRs essential or potentially essential to normative deliverables may have been declared to ETSI. The declarations
pertaining to these essential IPRs, if any, are publicly available for ETSI members and non-members, and can be
found in ETSI SR 000 314: "Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs); Essential, or potentially Essential, IPRs notified to
ETSI in respect of ETSI standards", which is available from the ETSI Secretariat. Latest updates are available on the
ETSI IPR online database.
Pursuant to the ETSI Directives including the ETSI IPR Policy, no investigation regarding the essentiality of IPRs,
including IPR searches, has been carried out by ETSI. No guarantee can be given as to the existence of other IPRs not
referenced in ETSI SR 000 314 (or the updates on the ETSI Web server) which are, or may be, or may become,
essential to the present document.
Trademarks
The present document may include trademarks and/or tradenames which are asserted and/or registered by their owners.
ETSI claims no ownership of these except for any which are indicated as being the property of ETSI, and conveys no
right to use or reproduce any trademark and/or tradename. Mention of those trademarks in the present document does
not constitute an endorsement by ETSI of products, services or organizations associated with those trademarks.
DECT™, PLUGTESTS™, UMTS™ and the ETSI logo are trademarks of ETSI registered for the benefit of its
Members. 3GPP™, LTE™ and 5G™ logo are trademarks of ETSI registered for the benefit of its Members and of the
3GPP Organizational Partners. oneM2M™ logo is a trademark of ETSI registered for the benefit of its Members and of ®
the oneM2M Partners. GSM and the GSM logo are trademarks registered and owned by the GSM Association.
Foreword
This Group Specification (GS) has been produced by ETSI Industry Specification Group (ISG) cross-cutting Context
Information Management (CIM).
Modal verbs terminology
In the present document "shall", "shall not", "should", "should not", "may", "need not", "will", "will not", "can" and
"cannot" are to be interpreted as described in clause 3.2 of the ETSI Drafting Rules (Verbal forms for the expression of
provisions).
"must" and "must not" are NOT allowed in ETSI deliverables except when used in direct citation.
Executive summary
The present document is providing a detailed description of the implementation of the NGSI-LD Test Suite. It describes
the architecture of the Test Suite, then goes into the details of the source code structure, the tests interfaces and the tests
libraries.
Introduction
The ISG CIM group has defined an API for exchange of information contextualised in time, space and relation to other
information using a property graph model with the intent that the associated protocol (called NGSI-LD) becomes the
"glue" between all kinds of applications and databases associated with services for Smart Cities, Smart Agriculture,
Smart Manufacturing, etc.
ETSI
5 ETSI GS CIM 014 V3.1.1 (2025-07)
To be successful, the NGSI-LD API specification needs to be well understood and well implemented. The community
of users will not be solely highly professional engineers employed by big companies but will include many small teams
and SMEs and even hobbyists. Therefore, it is essential that the developers have access to not only the standard but also
a test specification and a testing environment to check that their work is (and remains) conformant to the ETSI
NGSI-LD specification.
The developers will usually write integration tests to validate the behaviour of their NGSI-LD implementation, but it is
important to assert compliance to the specification [1] based on a Test Suite agreed by the group creating the API
specification, i.e. ETSI ISG CIM. Therefore, it is very important to create a set of ETSI-approved test cases.
What is more, the existence of such a Test Suite will likely help to increase the adoption of the NGSI-LD specification
by giving developers a ready to use and complete set of sample requests.
The present document describes the general architecture of the Test Suite, the overall organization of the source code,
the tests interfaces, the tests framework components, then the tests strategies. It concludes with a list of identified
untestable Tests Purposes.
ETSI
6 ETSI GS CIM 014 V3.1.1 (2025-07)
1 Scope
The present document defines the organization or grouping of test cases based on the functionality to be tested
(e.g. registration, subscription, query, etc.) and - most importantly - selects minimal subsets ("narrower scope") of
functionality to permit testing of the main features of an operating NGSI-LD system.
2 References
2.1 Normative references
References are either specific (identified by date of publication and/or edition number or version number) or
non-specific. For specific references, only the cited version applies. For non-specific references, the latest version of the
referenced document (including any amendments) applies.
Referenced documents which are not found to be publicly available in the expected location might be found in the
ETSI docbox.
NOTE: While any hyperlinks included in this clause were valid at the time of publication, ETSI cannot guarantee
their long-term validity.
The following referenced documents are necessary for the application of the present document.
[1] ETSI GS CIM 009 (V1.6.1): "cross-cutting Context Information Management (CIM); NGSI-LD
API".
[2] ETSI GS CIM 013: "Context Information Management (CIM); NGSI-LD Test Purposes
Descriptions".
2.2 Informative references
References are either specific (identified by date of publication and/or edition number or version number) or
non-specific. For specific references, only the cited version applies. For non-specific references, the latest version of the
referenced document (including any amendments) applies.
NOTE: While any hyperlinks included in this clause were valid at the time of publication, ETSI cannot guarantee
their long-term validity.
The following referenced documents may be useful in implementing an ETSI deliverable or add to the reader's
understanding, but are not required for conformance to the present document.
[i.1] ISG CIM repository at ETSI Forge: "Example code to implement NGSI-LD Test Purposes
Descriptions".
[i.2] ETSI GR CIM 015: "Context Information Management (CIM); NGSI-LD Testing Environment
Validation".
ETSI
7 ETSI GS CIM 014 V3.1.1 (2025-07)
3 Definition of terms, symbols and abbreviations
3.1 Terms
For the purposes of the present document, the following terms apply:
NOTE: The letters "NGSI-LD" were added to most terms to confirm that they are distinct from other terms of
similar/same name in use in other organizations, however, in the present document the letters "NGSI-LD"
are generally omitted for brevity.
NGSI-LD Context Registry: software functional element where Context Sources register the information that they can
provide
NOTE: It is used by Distribution Brokers and Federation Brokers to find the appropriate Context Sources which
can provide the information required for serving an NGSI-LD request.
NGSI-LD Context Source: source of context information which implements the NGSI-LD consumption and
subscription (and possibly provision) interfaces
NOTE: It is usually registered with an NGSI-LD Registry so that it can announce what kind of information it can
provide, when requested, to Context Consumers and Brokers.
3.2 Symbols
Void.
3.3 Abbreviations
For the purposes of the present document, the following abbreviations apply:
ATM Abstract Test Method
HTTP Hyper Text Transfer Protocol
JSON Javascript Object Notation
JSON-LD JSON for Linked Data
MQTT Message Queuing Telemetry Transport
NGSI-LD Next Generation Service Interfaces - Linked Data
SME Small Medium Enterprise
SUT System Under Test
TC Test Case
TPDL Test Purposes Description Language
TSS Test Suite Structure
TTF Testing Task Force
URL Uniform Resource Locator
4 Abstract Test Method (ATM)
4.1 Test Architecture
NGSI-LD test cases referenced in the present document relate to ETSI GS CIM 009 [1] and have been implemented
using Robot Framework, a generic, application and technology independent framework.
ETSI
8 ETSI GS CIM 014 V3.1.1 (2025-07)
The Robot Framework offers a highly modular architecture described in Figure 1:
• The test data is an easy-to-edit tabular format.
• The Robot Framework processes the test data, executes test cases and generates logs and reports. The core
framework does not know anything about the target under test, and the interaction with it is handled by test
libraries.
• The test libraries can either use application interfaces directly or use lower-level test tools as drivers.

Figure 1: Robot Framework architecture
4.2 Test source code structure
4.2.1 Folder Structures
The overall code is organized following the Robot Framework standard of project structure:
• data folder contains test data samples
• TP folder contains test cases following the Test Suite Structure
• libraries folder contains custom developed Python functions that are made available as keywords
• resources folder contains custom keywords and variables declarations
• doc folder contains Python code to automatically generate the documentation information of the TCs for ETSI
GS CIM 013 [2] and Unit Test to check that there is no change in the generated documentation
• scripts folder contains a list of shell commands for launching the tests in different configurations
• plug-test folder contains environment files, scripts and HTTP request collections used to setup and run the
major implementations when performing interoperability tests
• README.md file contains instructions on the setup and configuration of the Test Suite
• requirements.txt contains the required Python libraries
• LICENSE contains the ETSI license of the corresponding Tests
• pyproject.toml contains the description of the project to be used with poe
...