The Arquillian project adheres to three core principles:
Tests should be portable to any supported container
By keeping container-specific APIs out of the tests, developers can verify application portability by running tests against a variety of containers. It also means that lightweight containers can be used as a substitute for full containers during development.
Tests should be executable from both the IDE and the build tool
By leveraging the IDE, the developer can skip the build for a faster turnaround and has a familiar environment for debugging. These benefits shouldn't sacrifice the ability to run the tests in continuous integration using a build tool.
The platform should extend or integrate existing test frameworks
An extensible architecture encourages reuse of existing software and fosters a unified Java testing ecosystem
Arquillian brings your test to the runtime so you don't have to manage the runtime from the test. Arquillian packs the necessary orchestration logic neatly into the platform an its extensions. As a result, executing an Arquillian test is as simple as selecting "Run As > Test" in the IDE or executing the "test" goal from the build tool.