Re: Ada Test Tools

[eric@sarin.UUCP (Eric Beser sys admin)]

The one test tool that we are using is the software analysis
workstation by Northwest Instruments. It is a logic analyzer for
the software engineer.

To call it a logic analyzer may be a bit unfair. It passively sits
on the processor and does monitor the logic states of the machine.
This device connects to the IBM PC/XT or AT by a parallel port that
is memory mapped into the system. Using the Gem operating system
by Digital Research (mouse, etc) it can monitor up to two processors.

It will take the symbol table output of a linker and use the symbols
for software analysis. We are using this tool to integrate the Telesoft
Ada Compiler with a comercial operating system on a distributed
68020 platform. As many of you know, the highest area of risk in this
venture is to solve the intricate timing problems involved with the Ada
RTE, hardware and application code. Because the analysis is symbolic
you get to see what portions of code execute, how much time it takes
to get through a procedure, the percentage of time spent in the RTE,
how interrupts are being serviced and dealt with in the RTE. It provides
2167 spec code coverage to validate the test procedures.

The only requirement for use is that the compiler puts out a symbol map
with enough symbols to do the job. Northwest Instruments supports their
own format, and the Unix Namelist (COFF). We have adapted the map
output of the Telesoft Linker, our own 1750A ada compiler, and various
Jovial compilers. It works well with C too (but we don't talk about
languages that ruin you as software engineers).

We have done a comparison study between the Software Analysis Workstation
and Hewlet Packard's 64000 workstation. Both are good. NWIS beats HP
on price and in many areas on performance as well. HP does statistical
analysis. With NWIS, you can time and size a program with one execution
of the program. 

Eric Beser
Westinghouse DEC
EBESER@ADA20   (arpa)
{seismo,mimsy}aplcen!cp1!sarin!eric  (usenet)