Midrange Stuff, OS/400 Edition

Arcad Software, an established OS/400 software company based in France, is putting the finishing touches on a new utility for testing OS/400 applications. The new record and playback tool, called Verifier, will be added to Arcad's well-rounded suite of OS/400 software management tools, which includes integrated change management, source code analysis, cross reference, software distribution, and help desk capabilities. Verifier will be generally available in the United States in July, out of Arcad's new office in New Hampshire, which opened in May.

Testing is a vital part of any development project, but it can be tedious and time-consuming, which can lead to mistakes. The advent of automated record and playback test tools that use scripts can help speed the repetitive compile-test-compile-test quality assurance (QA) process, and leads to cleaner code overall.

Arcad already sells a couple of software test tools with its Qualifier suite of tools--one of five product suites developed by Arcad--including a database extraction component and an analysis tool, but Verifier is the company's first foray into automated testing tools.

With Verifier, Arcad has developed a "robot," designed to automate and streamline the time-consuming process of regression-testing new and modified applications. It lets users record various inputs and scenarios, then replay those scripts automatically against the application, in order to find discrepancies, particularly between different versions of an application.

The new tool will work against all traditional OS/400 server-side applications, including traditional green-screen user interfaces, but it does not test GUI clients. The software also is used to identify database modifications while a certain scenario is being executed, and to simplify the reloading of test data. Like most Arcad products, Verifier features a GUI, which, the company says, makes the product exceptionally easy to use.

Verifier joins two other test components in Qualifier, including Extract and Test Coverage Analyzer. Extract is used to pull information from an OS/400 database to develop test routines, which, before Verifier came on the scene, had to be performed manually. Test Coverage Analyzer helps users find which lines of source code have not yet run at the end of the test procedure, and is often used in conjunction with Arcad's change management software to more easily see modified but untested source lines.

There is a growing market for automated test tools in the OS/400 community, says Arcad's North American sales director, Marty Kilgallen, who joined the company about six weeks ago. "I believe the testing market is an evolving market," he says. "A lot of AS/400 shops are just becoming aware of their need for automated test tools."

Automated application testing is a natural direction for Arcad to take its software management product suite. For almost every Arcad product category, there are more popular options from bigger North American and European OS/400 software companies. Arcad claims it has an advantage by having a single integrated set of tools that covers the software management spectrum, from cross reference and source code analysis to change management and automated testing tools.

The company started to develop its core Arcad data repository technology in 1992, and in 1996 it launched its first OS/400 change management product, which today is included in the Skipper product suite. Other product suites with hooks into the core repository soon followed. Here's a quick rundown on the five product suites available today.

Observer is a collection of three products used to help customers understand how their applications work. It includes Miner, for describing the internal architecture of an application; Documenter, for generating technical documentation of an application; and Source Code Analyzer, for creating graphical flowcharts of application logic.

Skipper is a collection of three products to help companies maintain and grow their applications. It includes Changer, the change management component; Integrator, for tracking the way that modifications to third-party software affect a user's environment; and Deliver, for streamlining software distribution and installation.

Transformer is a collection of two products originally developed for Y2K remediation projects, now used primarily to expand field sizes. It includes Auto Impacter, for detecting at the source level what effect changes will have, and Auto Converter, for performing the conversions.

Qualifier is a collection of three products for testing OS/400 applications. It includes Extract, Test Coverage Analyzer, and, now, Verifier.

Customer is a native OS/400 help-desk application that features a browser-based interface and asset management.

Arcad Software is based in Paris, France, and counts about 200 European installs, mainly in France, but also in Belgium, Luxemburg, the United Kingdom, and Singapore. Company officials say they have about a dozen customers in the United States, but expect that number to grow as Arcad's new North American sales and support organization gets up and running.

In May, Phillippe Magne, the company's chief executive, hired Kilgallen, a former SoftLanding Systems sales representative, to head up the new Arcad office in New Hampshire. Magne says the company has learned from its experience in trying to break into the American market two to three years ago, and is developing a strong English-speaking support organization, which today consists of consultants.

Kilgallen likes the modularized approach that Arcad has taken in selling its product suite. "One of the advantages of the approach is that you don't have to buy all of them. All of the pieces are modularized, so you can just buy the repository," he says. Many customers opt to use the repository to "clean up" their environment before implementing a change management system, he says.

Verifier will be sold with the Qualifier suite, which is sold on a flat-fee basis and typically costs between $8,000 and $30,000. The company is finishing the translation of the Verifier documentation into English and expects to make the software generally available next month. For more information, go to www.arcadsoftware.com.