Relating interoperability testing with conformance testing

Conventionally the term conformance testing has been used to indiscriminately denote different types of conformance testing in a broad sense and the term interoperability testing has been used without regard to possibly different interoperability test architectures. This study classifies conformance testing into interface conformance testing and entity conformance testing and investigates how they can be related to interoperability testing as interoperability test architecture varies. It also discusses how the result of the investigation can be put into practical use for development of test suites and real test systems.