Abstract: The invention relates to a method for testing the compatibility between two software components of a control device network, a technical interface description being assigned to each software component, this interface description having a specified description standard, and each description standard having a hierarchical position in an hereditary hierarchy of all possible description standards. The common description standard, which is nearest in the hereditary hierarchy, of the software components to be compared is determined based on the hereditary hierarchy, and the common portion of the respective interface descriptions is determined based on the common description standard of the common portion of the respective interface descriptions and compared with one another.