As software complexity increases, developers must become more responsible for their contribution to the overall development project. It is becoming harder and harder for the developer to consider robust, end-to-end testing of their code an unachievable luxury.
In fact, developers need to proactively debug - that is, treat testing as an integral part of the development process, rather than waiting for defects to force their hand.
And why should this not be achievable? The advantage of proactive debugging is that it is manageable - testing is only performed on the code known intimately well by the developer (barring the case of inherited code, where the runtime tracing feature plays such a crucial role). There is little chance for confusion, so the time spent developing and deploying tests are optimized. Defects are eliminated early, ensuring that any system level defects that have slipped through the nets won't find their origin deep in the code. And test independence - due to the Target Deployment Port technology - ensures test reuse despite changes in target architecture.
Matters improve further when one considers the built-in integration that IBM Test RealTime possess with other products from IBM Rational software. Test RealTime is integrated with:
Rose RealTime - Access all runtime analysis functionality from within IBM Rational Rose RealTime, the embedded industry's most robust UML-based code generation tool for the embedded space. Whether using RQA-RT to test your model or whether you simply wish to execute Rose RealTime generated code, get runtime analysis data traceable to the implemented use case. You can even visualize model coverage via color-coded state machines. Click the following link for access to the IBM Rational Rose RealTime website:
http://www.ibm.com/software/awdtools/developer/technical/
ClearCase - Out-of-the-box integration with ClearCase, the industry's clear market leader for version control software. Go here to access to the IBM Rational ClearCase website:
http://www.ibm.com/software/awdtools/clearcase/
ClearQuest - Out-of-the-box integration to ClearQuest, the premier change management utility for diversified software teams. Submit context-sensitive defect reports directly from the Test RealTime interface. Go here to access to the IBM Rational ClearQuest website:
http://www.ibm.com/software/awdtools/clearquest/
TestManager - Establish full traceability between a product requirement (stored in tools such as IBM Rational RequisitePro), the test case for that requirement and the Test RealTime test implementing the test case. Ensure that when a test fails, you know which product feature has yet to be properly implemented; know which tests must be updated when features inevitably change.
IBM Rational Unified Process - Tool mentors help you implement various features of Test RealTime, conceived in the RUP framework - a mature, field-tested guide to the software development process. Go here to access to the IBM Rational Unified Process website:
http://www.ibm.com/software/awdtools/rup/