Parasoft Corporation announced the availability of a new release of Parasoft Jtest, a Java code analysis and unit-testing solution. Jtest 8.0 features several industry-first testing technologies that help teams automatically verify the functionality of complex, constantly changing enterprise systems (Java EE, SOA/Web Services), delivering increased customer satisfaction by reducing risks of system downtime and security vulnerabilities. At the same time, teams are now able to find more bugs with their existing resources, thereby increasing productivity while adhering to budget parameters.  

New in Jtest 8 is Bug Detective. By automatically tracing and simulating execution paths, Bug Detective exposes runtime bugs that would be difficult and time-consuming to find through manual testing or inspections.  With Bug Detective, users can find, diagnose, and fix classes of software errors that can evade coding standard analysis and unit testing.

“We deployed Jtest as part of our effort to improve development productivity and code reliability.  Developers are now required to systematically perform Static Analysis and Unit Testing on new and changed code,” stated Laurent Nicolas, Software Development Manager of Cisco Systems. “Jtest is used to enforce coding standards and to detect and fix errors early in the development cycle.  We are constantly looking at ways to improve our bug detection capabilities and are thrilled to explore the new features in Jtest 8.0.”

In order to reduce complexity in testing Java enterprise systems, Jtest now offers automated generation and execution of in-container Cactus test cases to simulate a realistic runtime environment. This allows early, development-level exposure of defects that might otherwise go unnoticed until QA, deployment, or production time, when it’s more expensive and prohibitive to find and fix such problems.

“Having the ability to automatically generate and execute Cactus tests for our Java EE applications in a live runtime environment makes life easier," states Anthony Licciardi, Vice President of Lehman Brothers. “Jtest has reduced the resources required to ensure the reliability of our core trading systems, where glitches and down-time are not acceptable.”

Jtest Tracer replaces Test Case Sniffer as a named capability and has been updated to increase its usability and effectiveness. Jtest Tracer, like Test Case Sniffer before it, allows users to quickly create realistic, functional JUnit test cases that reflect an application’s correct functional behavior and its individual operations. These “positive” test cases can be run to identify when new code changes break or modify existing applications. Jtest Tracer makes it much easier to control the “tracing” of a running application and increases the granularity of the test cases created.

“Parasoft Jtest 8 takes testing to a whole new level, well beyond any other testing solution,” stated Luis Barbier, Software Consultant for ISO. “Jtest Tracer has helped us identify breakages. With high rates of code change, we can’t avoid these problems from occurring, but we can now identify and address them as soon as they occur, which is when it's fastest, easiest, and cheapest to fix them.”

In addition, Jtest 8 includes a new code review module that helps automate the review process to facilitate code review participation and communication, and consequently make code reviews more productive and practical for organizations. The module allows users to define and manage distribution lists and groupings for code review notifications and routings. This Code Review module will benefit distributed development teams who cannot logistically participate in physical code review sessions.

Finally, Jtest 8 includes test case parameterization, a capability that allows Jtest-generated or user-defined JUnit test cases to be extended and customized with varied, controlled test input values to create test scenarios that reflect a broad range of realistic usage. Users can now control the range, type, and sequencing of test input values. This allows the development and execution of complex test case scenarios that ensure broad, thorough test coverage, and that validate the code’s response to a wide range of expected and unexpected user actions.

Other Parasoft Jtest 8 features include:

•    Coding Standards: Duplicate code detection, rules for Hibernate, and rules for Java 5

•    Unit Testing: JUnit 4.0 test execution support, test execution under the Eclipse debugger, method-level testing, server-side coverage for HTTPUnit tests

Availability
Parasoft Jtest is available for Windows 2000 and XP, Linux, and Solaris.