What is the difference between compliance testing versus interoperability testing?
Compliance means “I followed the technical specifications” and is generally tested against one software reference implementation. Interoperability testing goes one step further because it means each party is both compliant and can interoperate with each other party according to a subset of the standard. Interoperability testing is done among all participating software products. When an important communication is needed, an interoperable software product will ensure the communication will be there reliably and securely. It will work when needed. Interoperability testing goes further than compliance testing by ensuring that software solutions from different vendors can communicate thereby reducing integration and implementation costs. For example, the retail industry found compliance insufficient and made a strategic decision to roll-out only interoperability tested software in their supply chains. This was critical to successfully automating the exchange of millions of dollars of invoic
