BAC Turns to Mercury for Speedier Y2K Testing
By involving application users in the Y2K testing process, test scripts can be created to more accurately reflect the business process as well as shorten testing time. To offer such functionality to its customer base, AS/400 Year 2000 tool vendor Blackstone & Cullen Inc. (BAC, Atlanta, Ga.) recently partnered with Mercury Interactive Corp. (Sunnyvale, Calif.), provider of an interactive testing environment run from a PC-based console.
With this partnership, BAC hopes to provide "end-to-end ability to test both programs and data for Y2K compliance," says Frank Cullen, research principal with BAC. BAC's Data Commander 2.2 supports automated conversion and testing of AS/400, Unix and mainframe date formats and data. The tool also handles data cleansing and other data management tasks. Data Commander's data testing, analysis, date aging, and output comparison functionality will round out Mercury's TestSuite offering, says Jonathan Rende, senior product marketing manager at Mercury Interactive.
As part of the arrangement, BAC will also market Mercury Interactive's TestSuite 2000 Enterprise. This toolset consists of QuickTest 2000, which creates and performs date specific automated tests for integrated functional testing, test management and test data generation. QuickTest captures results directly from end-users , which reduces scripting time and ensures integration of business processes. WinRunner 2000 replays the scripts created in QuickTest to validate application function, and TestDirector stores the QuickTest scripts to manage the overall process.
Mercury Interactive also is partnering with Ernst & Young LLP, which uses TestSuite 2000 tools in its Year 2000 Accelerated Conversion Centers.