Antrix Aims to Make Y2K Testing Less Cumbersome
As time gets preciously short, many AS/400 shops may not have time or resources to test one application at a time. Now, Antrix Corp. (Miami, Fla.) has devised a way to perform multiple tests -- at the same time, on one box.
The company's TestGear/2000 date-field scanner for AS/400 data has been enhanced to facilitate separate test environments for separate applications, enabling the same tool to be used simultaneously on multiple applications. The toolset supports multiple workgroup environments on a single AS/400, says Valadi Srinivasan, VP of Antrix Corp. "Previously, if you had two applications which used the same sets of libraries or files, you'd have to wait for testing of the first application to conclude," he notes. "Then you would change the dates, age the same set of files, and go through the same process."
Antrix also has added three new modules to the latest version of TestGear/2000. The three utilities -- Data Extractor, Test Coverage Auditor, and Data Auditor Test -- position TestGear as an independent verification and validation (IV&V) tool that can ensure that affected date fields have been remediated prior to testing.
The Data Extractor utility enables users to extract a minimum set of test data from large amounts of application data, based on user-defined rules. This ensures that the best test data comes from the live production environment, says Srinivasan. Since it may be impractical to test applications with massive amounts of production data, this selection process will reduce time involved in test bed preparation, he notes.
Antrix's auditing tools will identify the number of compliant and non-compliant fields in the database, and if the testing covered the most critical parts of the application. Test Coverage Auditor tracks source code and provides test audit logs and reports on source lines not executed in the testing process. Data Auditor generates audit reports on date fields scanned prior to testing.