Re: RATIONAL TESTMATE for ADA Testing - Any experiences to share ?

["Brian Collins" <bjcollin@hotmail.com>]

Dave,

I have used the Testmate MCDC tool on many verification projects involving
embedded avionics software.  If your code uses the Rational Ada compiler and
the workstation you are using it on is both the host and target environment,
then everything is very cool and this is a very slick tool to use.  When you
deviate from those two rules the tool continues to operate, but it will take
a lot more  effort to keep it going.  You can still keep the test cases in
Testmate and keep track of your verification effort, but it becomes much
less automated.  In our environment we have to deviate from both rules by
first using a non-Apex cross-compiler via RCI and by second having our
target environment in our actual hardware box and not on the workstation.
Breaking the first rule causes us some grief sometimes with code that simply
will not instrument, but this is pretty rare and usually has to do with the
differences between the cross-compiler's understanding of Ada and Apex's
understanding of Ada.  Breaking the second rule is what hurts us the most by
not having the test cases automated which takes the most time to create each
test case and test by hand all of our decisions and conditions in our code
then giving Testmate the results.  If you have an automated way of runing
through your test cases with scripts and collecting coverage, then you will
really like this tool.  Where can I get information on the other tools you
mentioned?  Thank you.

Brian Collins
brian.collins@www.mebbs.com
bjcollin@rockwell.collins.com
http://www.math.swt.edu/~rambo

David Akister wrote in message <374667df@news.compd.com>...
>I would like to know if anyone  can share experience of using the Rational
>Testmate tool with Rational Apex on UNIX. Of particular interest is the
>management of code units, time taken developing and modifying test-sets and
>flexibility of the system.
>
>Oh, and before I forget how does the system compare with other test suites
>for ADA testing such as ADATEST and LDRA (for coverage metrics) ?
>
>Any help is much appreciated
>Regards
>
>Dave Akister
>Senior Software Engineer
>Wellgate Technology Ltd
>
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