Programming Research Ltd of Esher, Surrey has announced a new tool for software development and maintenance environments. QA Manager is said to offer change control, configuration control, and quality control of stored text modules, and to facilitate modifications of software programs without error. Each change or addition to the source code must be justified, recorded and tested, and this enables users to monitor the status of each project. Also, it means that errors cannot be incorporated into the source code. When a module is returned, it is tested against an absolute programming standard which is designed to detect whether the module has degraded in any way, and it is accepted only if it passes the various tests, and since these are user configurable, the final program ought to comply with both industry standards and those of the individual organisation. Programming Research says that the Change Control system keeps a track of reported bugs and proposed improvements to the software, so that with a formal sign-off and the provision of an audit trail, Change Requests will pass through a defined sequence of stages to ensure accuracy at each stage. The third key feature is the Configuration Control system which keeps a record of all previous versions of every module. It can show which changes have been made, the when and why, and the programmer responsible for change. In addition, Version Control is provided with previous versions of the library able to be reproduced with a single command, and since the modules are borrowed and returned, no two users can edit simultaneously. With a Motif graphical user interface, QA Manager, in conjunction with QA Fortran and QA C, will operate in several environments including Digital Equipment Corp, Sun Microsystems Inc and Hewlett-Packard Co Unix variants.
