Reduce Risk of Unexpected Defects in the Field and Manage the Ripple Effects of Change

Overview

Wind River Test Management technology measures test coverage, maps test-to-code for traceability, profiles performance, enables white-box visibility, and speeds up diagnostics of complex devices, all at run-time. The system provides the run-time feedback that test teams and their management need to achieve the highest possible quality in the least amount of time.

This unique system enables test teams to work smarter, not harder, and facilitates more efficient collaboration between testers and developers. Wind River Test Management provides bottom-line payback through reliable delivery of higher-quality products, at lower cost and with less risk.

Wind River Test Management leverages run-time feedback from devices under test to achieve the highest quality in the least amount of time

Wind River Test Management lets you optimize test execution while providing run-time visibility into device operation under test. It provides the information you need to improve testing, reduce test times, and find bottlenecks and defects before your customers do. With the click of their mouse, system testers can do the following:

• Determine automatically what tests need to be run when code changes.
• Identify what portions of device software are not tested.
• Identify performance regressions between builds or releases.

These capabilities are delivered within an open test execution engine specifically designed for embedded device testing. It features a build-oriented data model and a modular hybrid test type and utilizes an integral virtual lab manager to handle the complexity normally associated with managing and provisioning devices in a test lab.

Reduce Risk Associated with Untested Code
Wind River Test Management reduces the risk of critical bugs slipping through in untested code and showing up in the field. Such defects can damage your brand and create costly product recalls. It is often difficult for test managers to measure the quality of their test plans or optimize test execution. Traditional code coverage tools provide a fine-grained view of unit test comprehensiveness but are typically too heavy for use in the quality assurance (QA) lab on functional and system tests.

Optimize Testing with Run-Time Analytics
Most testing today is limited to a black-box view of the device under test. Testers work from the “outside” and observe results through whatever pass/fail information, static logs, or error codes are available. Wind River Test Management enables a white-box view into actual device operations when under test. Critical information can be gathered from running equipment, providing a clearer picture of test effectiveness, performance, defects, and more. The net result is testers can gather the key feedback they need from complex devices and store and manage this information in sync with test execution.

Run-time test coverage reduces the risk of untested changes slipping through by providing visibility into which device software functions have not been tested

Change-Driven Test Automation

Test teams often have trouble keeping up when working in iterative or agile development processes because they can’t easily focus their efforts on what’s new. Changes happen rapidly and often close to important development milestones, leaving little or no time for comprehensive testing. Wind River Test Management automatically identifies changes between binary software builds (changed, new, and deleted code). It also leverages run-time test coverage information to generate a traceability map that shows the linkage between test cases and code. The system then uses this information to automatically determine just what test cases are required to run when code has changed and generates optimized test suites. This helps ensure that untested code does not slip through, while saving significant testing time and eliminating the guesswork for each new build.

Wind River Test Management binary differencing and test-to-code traceability focuses testing efforts on changed code

Manage Test Devices and Labs

Many companies have capital equipment spread across many test labs in different locations. That makes it hard for testers to know if devices with the correct configuration are available and difficult to provision them with the right software for testing.

Wind River Test Management includes a virtual lab manager (VLM) that provides tight integration of test target management with test execution and analytics, simplifying lab setup and management and providing a full life cycle test-device audit trail. The VLM saves time and hassle when working with test lab devices and allows maximum utilization of people and capital equipment resources. In addition to its built-in virtual lab manager, Wind River Test Management provides an open interface, enabling it to integrate with any virtual lab management solution, from any vendor. A specific “VLM user” role enables developers to decouple the lab management capabilities from Test Management’s testing features and to use this feature to reserve lab devices for their own use.

Organize and Reserve Networked Devices

• Enable easy setup of virtual lab groupings of test equipment in local labs or across corporate networks.
• Facilitate fast and effective searches for needed equipment.
• Make it easy to schedule, reserve, and check out testing equipment.

Manage Multi-core Devices and Test Beds

• Control and run tests against multiple cores or devices simultaneously.
• Manage built-in run-time analytics to gather white-box data from the live device under test.
• Deploy test coverage analysis, performance measurement, fault injection, or dynamic diagnostics instrumentation across multiple cores or processors.

Tighten Integration with Test Execution

• Assign test suites to available devices at run-time.
• Automatically map test execution to selected devices.
• Record and track the results in the system's database.

Test Virtual Devices Using Simulators

• Test a virtual device being simulated in software, as soon as a model is constructed.
• Enable QA teams to start testing as early as possible; begin even before the physical board is produced, eliminating the dependency on board availability.
• Use Wind River Simics and VxWorks Simulator.

Mine and Manage Test Results

Wind River Test Management is built around a choice of scalable, relational databases that allow storage and management of all test results and analytics for mining, analysis, and archiving.

Unified Test Data Management

• Retain all test information and store it in an underlying database for easy mining.
• Store specific projects, builds, test cases, test suites, and device information with their associated test results.
• Capture any logs that are generated during the test process and store them along with pass/fail results.

Interactive Dashboards

• Provide easy and flexible access to key data via a web browser or the system's user interface and interactive graphical dashboards.
• Enable users to select specific test runs, modules, projects, etc.
• Offer instant access to current or cumulative data displays.

Test Log Parsing and Subresults Display

• Allow users to create parser scripts that post-process custom or third-party logs and expose summary data from the log file to the system.
• Display summary results in a new subresults area of the system's Test Run tab so users can easily drill down to see subresults of a test run.
• Give users visibility of intermediate points of execution or results during complex, automated test runs.

Custom Reporting

• Use the new Build Change Summary report to show exactly how the code was changed between builds, helping managers to assess code churn and do change-based risk assessment in iterative or agile processes.
• Help managers assess the thoroughness of their testing with reports such as Coverage Trends and Functions Not Covered.
• Automatically generate many popular report formats, including PDF, XLS, RTF, and HTML, which facilitates easy sharing and viewing of files.

Multiple Deployment Options

Wind River Test Management leverages open interfaces within your existing test environment. You can connect run-time analytics into your existing test systems, let Wind River Test Management control your legacy test beds, or migrate your test and execution environment into Wind River Test Management. Select the appropriate strategy for your projects based on life cycle stage, business needs, and state of existing test assets.

Open CLI
The system can perform automated or batch operations as commanded by external scripts or applications. For example, when a new build comes available, Wind River Test Management can be driven to set up and run regression test suites on the new build automatically. An open command-line interface (CLI) provides access to server commands, allowing integration with third-party applications or external scripts for automated control.

Web-Based Platform
Based on industry-standard J2EE application servers, a relational database, and downloadable device agents, Wind River Test Management provides a scalable, distributed architecture that brings together the development and testing players into a common environment. Users interact through web-browser-based applications and command-line or Eclipse-based developer tools.

Wind River Sensorpoint Technology
Wind River's sensorpoint technology lets users probe or patch running devices without rebuilding the device software or stopping the device. Sensorpoints allow developers and testers to inject code into a running executable to gather data, force faults, add functionality, diagnose problems, gather run-time analytics information, or do white-box testing. Sensorpoints are minimally intrusive on device performance and footprint so they can be used in actual devices under test.

Broad Platform Support
Wind River Test Management was designed for embedded device system test and aims to support the widest range of device processor, operating system, host, and infrastructure software combinations. This list is continuously expanding to cover Wind River Linux, Wind River VxWorks, and non-Wind River platforms. Contact your Wind River representative for details.