Sunnyvale, California-based Pure Software Inc has announced PureVision, the first program capable of using the Internet to automate remote user testing of software programs. Pure Software says this capbility will enable software developers to try out software more quickly and efficiently before it is fully deployed. For data collection, the software makes use of Pure Software’s Object Code Insertion technology, the basis of all its software program testing tools. No changes are made to the source code, and a compiler converts the C or C++ into machine code; PureVision reads the machine code and knows where to insert its own instructions in the object code. Instructions are inserted where a memory-related instruction happens and PureVision looks at start-stop times, when functions got executed, and looks at a stack trace to find where crashes occur. The file is linked, and instructions inserted, to produce an executable file. The company claims that the overhead due to these insertions is not high. Types of statistics monitored include features used, hours tested, runs per test site and number of unique crashes. Actual usage is logged, as is crash-related information to aid debugging. Pure Software says one advantage is the lack of many levels of testing, through the product’s automation of tasks. With alpha and beta testing you rely on faxes and phonecalls and assume the people testing are accurate with their data, said Mike Armistead, the product manager for PureVision.
Symptomatic of external events
Another accusation levelled at using human testers is that they can only give you answers symptomatic of external events, not the internals of what is actually happening. The automated processes mentioned are the ability to collect information using Object Code Insertion; the automatic sending of result data by electronic mail; and the use of sets of pre-built charts to analyse the data, rather than having to construct charts from scratch. Information gained from testing may be previewed at the site using PureMonitor, a part of PureVision. The data is then sent via electronic mail as ASCII text to the assessment site, which takes the data into a preconstructed database, and information from the database may be used in the predefined charts and reports, of which there are 20. Customised charts can also be used for analysis. If the company doing the testing feels that transmitting results via the Internet is too much of a security risk, resultant files can be sent on floppy disk. The PureMonitor facility enables the test site to delete any information that the company does not wish to be electronically mailed, and the architecture is also set up to handle encryption products such as Kerberos, says Pure Software. The product is said to be transparent to the end user: Armistead says this means that users just use the product, and if the system crashes nothing is affected and the automation means no-one physically has to collect the stuff and send it off. Distribution of the software is by Compact Disk. Sales are through the direct channel by phone or from field offices in the US, Netherlands, Germany, France, Benelux, the UK, Japan and through distributors elsewhere in Europe. PureVision will be available next quarter for Solaris 2 on Sparcstations. PureVision for SunOS and HP-UX will follow in the next six months. Pricing is based on number of test sites per concurrent test project. The standard price for one project with up to 75 remote testing sites, exclusive of maintenance and upgrades is $70,000 in the US.
