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Cyrano noses into test suite competition

• By Jack Vaughan
• July 19, 2001

The merger last year of test industry players Performance Software and IMM has resulted this year in a test software suite of notable proportions. British Performance Software (with U.S. offices in Newburyport, Mass.) and French IMM have joined forces under the Cyrano Inc. banner, and their first combined product effort is known as the Cyrano Suite.

Cyrano Suite includes four packs of products: ClientPack, ServerPack, VTPack and DBPack. The database product arises from IMM's lineage, and is offered in a version that specifically supports Sybase's Inc.'s Sybase SQL Server 11.

Useful in Cyrano WinScope is a navigational capability listing classes' instances, functions, events, controls and inheritances.

SYNOPSIS WINDOW

Among the portions of the Cyrano Suite that we looked at was WinScope, an element in the Cyrano ClientPack. A session with WinScope opens with a synopsis window. By pointing at your application libraries with the WinScope Synopsis window engaged, you can gain a useful view of the structure of objects in your applications. The number of classes is depicted, and a breakdown is provided as to which of these classes have inheritance and which do not. Thus, using the Synopsis window, you can drill down within available scripts in order to obtain a listing of unused local variables lurking in your code

With the list of unused local variables in hand you can subsequently perform further analysis with a clear eye toward better optimization of the application's performance. The steps in using WinScope are ably portrayed in documentation and a demo provided by Cyrano, which specifically covers Cyrano WinScope for PowerBuilder. As Cyrano is the result of the merger of French and British concerns, it is not surprising that Lotus Screen Cam demos are made available in both French and English, but it is a little surprising, though welcome, that a third version comes in a third language. Yes, "American," is offered as well. Cyrano Suite

The Cyrano software suite can present the unused variables discovered in an app in the form of a table that comes complete with associated locations. When you drill down on any individual unused variable, the WinScope Editor calls up the instance of the variable's occurrence. Also useful in WinScope is a navigation capability that lets you list classes and then gain information on instances, functions, events, controls and inheritances.

A SYBASE CASE

We had an opportunity to speak with a Cyrano software user, Jeff Rogers, database services manager, USF&G Insurance, Baltimore, Md., who has worked closely with the DBPack for Sybase 11 migration. "We've done four [application] migrations using the software," said Rogers, "and we've found Cyrano to be extremely useful." Said Rogers, the DBPack can effectively capture transactions, play them back, and show where performance may be degraded in a Version 11 setup versus a Version 10 configuration. "This tool can pinpoint the transactions that aren't performing," he said.

Database maker Sybase clearly stumbled with its earlier move to Sybase SQL 10. Would software such as Cyrano's have helped that migration? "We basically had to do this manually before," said Rogers. "Cyrano would have helped us pinpoint problems earlier."

"It has been a life saver as far as doing these migrations," said Rogers. "It has dramatically improved our ability to deliver [systems], and given us a higher degree of confidence in the migration."

SUMMARY

The Cyrano user interface is friendly, the logic of the test procedures implicit, and -- for shops that need advanced test capabilities -- the product worth considering among the host of contenders for today's ASQ test dollars. Individual suite elements such as the DBPack may prove particularly useful. The Cyrano Suite is available now. Pricing begins at $2,250 for Cyrano ClientPack, $10,000 for Cyrano DBPack, $37,500 for ServerPack and $25,000 for VTPack. Several .zip file demos of Cyrano software are available at www.cyrano.com, the company's Web site.