CenterLine's new QualityCenter family empowers development organizations with automated testing tools; Company now offers industry's broadest range of "quality-centered" testing and development tools.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 19, 1995--At a time when accidents, lawsuits and eroding consumer confidence can be directly attributed to poor software quality, CenterLine Software, Inc. today unveiled QualityCenter, a new family of automated software testing tools to help development organizations dramatically improve the quality and speed of developing software applications.

While traditional approaches divorce testing from the development process, making quality assurance a post-development endeavor, CenterLine's new QualityCenter family allows companies to more thoroughly and cost-effectively flush out defects in their code earlier in the development process. When combined with CenterLine's popular ObjectCenter and CodeCenter programming environments, the company now offers the industry's broadest range of C/C++ software development solutions to enable quality-centered development, from the first compile through deployment. The QualityCenter family includes:

    QC/Replay a high-performance GUI capture/playback tool for X
    Windows-based applications.

    QC/Coverage a code coverage and analysis tool for test planning
    and measuring how much of an application was properly tested.

    QC/Sim a unique add-on to QC/Coverage for simulating
    difficult-to-test situations, such as disk or network failures.

    TestCenter the premier programmer's testing tool to offer runtime
    error and memory leak detection together with code coverage
    capabilities.  CenterLine enhanced TestCenter by seamlessly
    integrating it with QC/Replay.Solving the software quality crisis

"Diminishing software quality has become the number one customer concern in a world that increasingly depends on mission-critical software," said Paul Henderson, CenterLine's vice president of marketing. "Too many software organizations still take a deliver first and fix later approach to application development, giving quality lower priority than time-to-market and functionality. CenterLine's focus is to empower developers to take control of the quality of their work and bridge the gap between quality assurance and development teams through the application of sophisticated testing automation solutions."

According to industry advocates, diminishing software quality has also yielded significant economic, safety and legal liabilities. "A software defect in an airline reservation system can cost an airline $20,000 per minute. Defects in safety-critical software have caused hundreds of fatalities. And dozens of software companies have lost lawsuits over product quality issues. The irony in this situation is the money a corporation spends on a lawsuit could have covered all the tools and training they'd ever need to test their software for defects in the first place," said Dick Bender, president of Bender & Associates, a leading software testing and consulting firm.

QC/Replay provides faster, reliable GUI testing

QC/Replay is a GUI record/playback tool that automates the painstaking process of capturing and replaying user keystrokes and mouse clicks to uncover deviations in an X Windows application s behavior. By automating the thousands of tests a GUI-based client/server application typically requires, QC/Replay can significantly improve new software's time-to-market by uncovering flaws early in the development cycle that can undermine the application.

QC/Replay is the only GUI testing tool to combine true "widget awareness" (in which test scripts interact directly with Motif buttons, scroll bars and other GUI building-block objects), an open, standard scripting language -- the Tool Command Language (Tcl), and automatic synchronization to provide object-based capture/playback verification of complex applications. QC/Replay's widget-based approach enables tests which are more readable, maintainable and resilient to changes.

QC/Replay is also distinguished by its focus on X Windows applications. Where cross-platform GUI testing tools must compromise some platform-specific functionality, QC/Replay is a best-of-class tool for mission-critical UNIX applications, able to more thoroughly test the unique interface functions of the X Windows interface.

QC/Coverage identifies untested code for more focused testing

QC/Coverage is a powerful code coverage and analysis tool for quickly identifying how much of an application code was exercised during testing. By evaluating the coverage of test scripts, programmers can easily identify functions, classes, modules and units that have not been tested and focus efforts on untested code, ultimately improving the use of testing resources and enhancing productivity and product quality. QC/Coverage also provides industry standard testing metrics to assist in test planning with specialized support for the C++ language.

For example, Planning Systems, Inc., a Virginia-based defense consulting firm, is using QC/Coverage in the development of data acquisition, safety monitoring, and analysis software for Navy submarine trials. "Since we're dealing with multi-million dollar assets during these submarine trials, software quality and reliability is very important. QC/Coverage provides our developers with a tool to speed branch and call coverage testing, and provides our project managers with documentation that the testing met the project's code coverage standard," said David Diehl, testing manager for the System Simulation and Design Group at Planning Systems. "QC/Coverage revealed unreachable and unused branches in our source code. By removing these branches, we were able to simplify the logic and reduce code maintenance costs down the road."

QC/Sim simulates hard to test scenarios

QC/Sim is the industry s first test simulation tool for replicating difficult-to-test situations that impact an application's behavior, such as a network crash or disk drive that has reached its capacity. It allows developers to "fake a failure" easily, unobtrusively and automatically. As an add-on to QC/Coverage, the two tools enable users to remove hidden defects by simulating real-life conditions.

TestCenter provides sophisticated runtime error, memory leak detection

TestCenter is an easy-to-use testing tool for C and C++ programmers. It provides sophisticated runtime error and memory leak detection; lets programmers test hard to simulate error conditions; and receive visual feedback on the thoroughness of their testing. TestCenter features new integration with QC/Replay to provide the most comprehensive test solutions for GUI applications.

Pricing/platforms and availability

The following lists the platform support, availability schedule and U.S. list pricing of the QualityCenter family. Prices are for a single floating license.

             QC/Replay  QC/Coverage  QC/Coverage  QC/Sim   TestCenter
                        (C)          (C++)

Pricing      $6,995     $5,995       $8,995       $9,600    $3,895

                       Availability  ((a) = immediately)

HP-UX 9.0      (a)       (a)           (a)          (a)        (a)

SunOS/Solaris  (a)       (a)           (a)          (a)        (a)

IBM AIX        (a)       (a)           (a)          (a)        July 95

UnixWare       (a)       (a)           (a)          (a)

Digital UNIX   (a)      Q4 95          Q4 95        Q4 95

OS/2                     (a)           (a)          (a)

For a limited time, CenterLine is offering a special bundle promotion of QC/Replay and TestCenter at 25% off the list, or $9,995. The bundle provides a single floating license of each product and includes a full year of support.

CenterLine Software, Inc., a privately held corporation headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., is the leading independent provider of workstation-based programming tools for professional developers. CenterLine offers a complete suite of tightly integrated, open and standards-based tools including C++ and C programming environments, testing tools and advanced compilation technologies. The sponsor of CenterStage , the premier independent software vendor partner program, CenterLine joins forces with major tools vendors to deliver value-added integrations spanning the entire software development lifecycle.

CenterLine and CodeCenter are registered trademarks, and QualityCenter, ObjectCenter, QC/Replay, QC/Coverage, QC/Sim and TestCenter are trademarks of CenterLine Software, Inc.

CONTACT: Jill Godett

CenterLine Software, Inc.

617-498-3287

[e-mail]

or

Laura Desmarais

Beaupre & Co. Public Relations, Inc.

603-436-6690

[e-mail]