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

["David Akister" <wellgate@dial.pipex.com>]

Brian,
Thanks for your response, I think you hit the nail on the head certainly
with my impressions of the TESTMATE suite. It seems well integrated with the
Apex environment, but the need to cross-compile on a non-Rational target
compiler means that a lot of the advantage is lost. With the need for
validated compilers for safety-critical use this does make life difficult.
Additionally one of the main selling points appears to be the ability to
provide code coverage listings based on 'Persistant Intermediate
representations' ie object code. This is is good stuff if you're using the
prescribed compiler....

Generally though the demonstration that I was party to was very impressive,
and generation of simple test cases and stubs could be usefully
auto-generated. Test-case replicators allow test-lists to be easily produced
from the test case template. All good stuff in my opinion... a lot of time
is usually spent manually reproducing test cases with varying parameters and
managing them.This makes things pretty easy.

Overall then, assuming that the end customer is happy with the choice of
cross-compiler, it has my recommendation (for what its worth !)

LDRA stands for Liverpool Data Research Associates and they produce a very
good suite of tools for static analysis and dynamic code coverage. This
generates some very useful complexity and knotting reports but in my
experience it's used primarily for code coverage, with alternate forms of
static analysis tools are used for assessment and possible proving. examples
of these are Spark (excellent) and MALPAS (good output but heavy going).

If you're interested, I'll try and dig out some contact numbers.

Regards
David Akister

Brian Collins wrote in message <7i99ls$lv$1@ins8.netins.net>...
>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
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>