ASAM OTX Extensions

ASAM OTX in conjunction with ISO 13209 (OTX) can be used in any application area where the definition of test procedures for documentation purposes or in an automation system is required. Typical application areas in the automotive industry are in ECU diagnostics testing, ECU calibration and EOL-testing.

In 2012, ISO published the new standard ISO 13209 "Open Test Sequence Exchange" (OTX), part 1 to 3, which has the main purpose to define a language and exchange format for the specification of executable test sequences. OTX has originally been developed for the area of ECU diagnostics testing, but is not limited to this area. Soon after the first OTX-based systems appeared on the market, end users required additional functionality, which were promptly implemented by tool suppliers. Some of the requested functionality, such as file processing or specific complex data types, impeded the exchangeability of OTX files and the interoperability of test systems. Consequently, there was a need to further standardize the additional functionality.

ASAM OTX fills those functional gaps of ISO 13209. Overall, 25 extensions are defined in ASAM OTX, which include:

• Ensuring otx sequence quality 
• Transport customer specific data types 
• Collection of communication data at runtime 
• Handling of communication interfaces and Diagnostic over IP 
• Dialogs for common use cases 
• Definition of user defined structure and enumeration data types 
• Support of different ECU responses for hex service and com channel controlling 
• Configuration of project and vehicle information 
• Browsing of ODX database properties 
• ECU variant coding 
• State machine of diagnostics services
• Support for deep change monitoring in a List or Map 
• Provides actions, terms, events and data types for an access to external services. 
• General read and write access to files
• Enable late binding of flash files 
• Store runtime information of an equal run-time system 
• Data types to represent values alongside intervals
• Read and write access to a SQL data base 
• Description of a behavior model with states, transactions and actions 
• Mechanism to transport status information from inside a sequence to the environment [DEPRECATED]
• Evaluated and structured storage of result Information (e.g. for statistics) from test sequences 
• Advanced convenience functionality 
• Access to information about the vehicle network architecture 
• Read and interpret XML documents, modification of existing and creation of new documents 
• Compressed data exchange 
• JSON processing
• Support of service-oriented vehicle diagnostics

The content (except for JSON and SOVD-support) was published as ISO 13209-4. The missing extensions JSON and SOVD-support will be published in ISO in the near future.

Standard Authors

ACTIA IME GmbH, AVL DiTEST Fahrzeugdiagnose GmbH, Audi AG, Cognitran Ltd., Daimler AG, DSA-Daten- und Systemtechnik GmbH, emotive GmbH & Co. KG, KPIT Infosystems GmbH, M&K Mess- und Kommunikationstechnik GmbH, Porsche AG, Robert Bosch GmbH, Siemens AG, Softing Automotive Electronics GmbH, Sontheim Industrie Elektronik GmbH, Volkswagen AG.