Original’s i/OS Testing Kit Now Available in DBCS

April 6, 2010 Alex Woodie

System i users in Asian countries will now be able to use Original Software‘s i/OS utilities to test their double byte character set (DBCS)-enabled applications, Original announced last week with the launch of TestBench for System i version 7. This is good news for large global customers of the U.K. software vendor who are moving into Japanese and Chinese markets. The new version also brings more granular support for independent auxiliary storage pools (iASPs), which should improve application resiliency.

In the hierarchy of Original test products, TestBench occupies the bottom tier, next to the databases that underpin business applications (TestDrive, TestDrive–Assist, and TestSmart sit higher up). TestBench not only extracts test data from each of the three supported databases–DB2/400, Microsoft SQL Server, and the Oracle database–but it manages the test cases and scrambles the data so its loss poses no risk. And, of course, TestBench performs the database validation that’s so critical to regression testing activities during the application development lifecycle.

Now that TestBench for System i supports DBCS, Original customers serving Asian audiences will be able to perform this all-important database validation against their i/OS applications. This gives Original a leg up on the competition, according to company CEO Colin Armitage.

“Although quite a niche field, no other supplier has capabilities to support DBCS for testing green-screen apps or at the database level,” he states in a press release. “For the modern business, being able to comprehensively test systems in all its operating geographies is simply a must.”

Original has “quite a few big enterprise customers” that operate globally, and some of these customers are moving into the big markets in China and Japan, says Original COO George Wilson via e-mail. Many of these large multinationals use testing service providers to make sure their applications are up to par in all geographies, and DBCS will assist with that, he adds.

TestBench for System i version 7 also brings improved support for i/OS applications running in iASPs. Although TestBench could work with an application running in an iASP before, Original needed to tweak the product to support the demands of customers who wanted to “dynamically address” different iASPs during testing,” Wilson says.

“So whereas before it was necessary to define your iASP groups in advance,” he continues, “they can now be defined as part of the test case or the environment, and can be manipulated during the test process to provide sophisticated support for cross-iASP testing.”

For more information on TestBench for System i, see the company’s Web site at www.origsoft.com.