New Version of LDRA Tool Suite Provides First End-to-End Software Verification Solution

Managing requirements throughout the software development lifecycle gives customers a critical cost-cutting measure absolutely essential during this economic downturn. Reports indicate that up to 70% of project defects are attributed to requirements management and traceability. By integrating requirements management into the LDRA tool suite using TBreq, LDRA’s tool for next-generation management and complete automation of requirements traceability, developers can reduce software errors, project costs, and resource constraints. TBreq creates a relationship between requirements, code modules, and verification artifacts (static analysis, dynamic analysis, unit- and system-level test). All informal changes and test results are recorded, and any requirements impacted by these changes are highlighted so that all team members can identify data and code which might be suspect.



By tailoring the LDRA tool suite to international industry standards, LDRA offers developers across the embedded market the essential elements for effective process improvement. v8.0 provides important support and adoption of FAA, FDA, DoD and MILS standards and implements methodology to help companies improve their CMMI maturity. Using LDRA DO-178B tool qualification support pack, customers gain end-to-end certification support for the FAA’s DO-178B levels C, B and A, which is rapidly becoming a best-practice methodology in non-aerospace industries such as automotive, medical, and nuclear, where systems have safety-related or function-critical characteristics.



“Systems and software developers are increasingly looking to industries such as aerospace to reduce defect rates, improve development timescales, and create higher quality end products,” noted Ian Hennell, LDRA Operations Director. “LDRA’s tool suite offers code coverage metrics right down to the object code level, an essential level of detail to combat quality and cost challenges. Through adopting rigorous standards, non-aerospace companies enhance their development processes, meet industry coding standards, and come closer to achieving zero-defect software.”



Notably, standards such as DO-178B are principally process oriented. For each process, objectives are defined and a means of satisfying these objectives is described. Software components assessed as DO-178B level A undergo stringent verification, testing every route through the source code and confirming that the compiler has not introduced additional branches or code structures in the object code. LDRA’s DO-178B tool qualification support pack assists with this assessment in levels A-E with level A requiring the most strict adherence. With the right tools and facilities, non-aerospace companies can realize the full potential and benefits that rigorous quality analysis, testing and verification may bring in terms of increased code quality, improved reliability and cost savings.



“Lockheed Martin’s successful delivery of the F-35 Lightning II airplane for its first flight on time and on budget is a testimony to the superior cost control of effective verification management,” added Hennell. “Such successes are why other industries are taking a look at quality software control. They realize that best programming practices can enable them to meet increasingly rigorous cost constraints during the current economic crisis.” Further details on LDRA’s involvement in the Lighting II Joint Strike Fighter project can be found at www.ldra.com/jsf.asp.



v8.0 of the LDRA tools suite also introduces a number of ease-of-use optimizations. Thanks to significant speed improvements developers across multisite deployments can analyse large projects quickly and efficiently from requirements through static and dynamic analysis and testing. Support for comprehensive coverage analysis automatically links coverage results from system level tests with highly targeted unit level testing. Following more intuitive organization, structural coverage results are graphically displayed based on a user-defined suite of requirements-based test cases. These coverage results are now integrated into the classic LDRA Testbed coverage reports, enterprise-level TBreq reports, and used to complete your verifications analysis.



The LDRA tool suite is made up of a number of integrated products which assist users with achieving full lifecycle support, LDRA’s tool suite assists developers in software standards checking, analysis of code coverage, unit testing, and object-code verification. LDRA Testbed, the core engine of the LDRA tool suite, forms the foundation of automated software verification. LDRA Testbed performs the code, quality, and design reviews on the source code. It conducts test verification for code coverage, including statement, branch/decision, test path, procedure/function call metrics, and provides access to the Test Manager. LDRA has also added TBvision, a next-generation graphical reporting and documentation tool, to the LDRA tool suite that enables companies to easily see how their source code performs against security vulnerabilities, fault-detection, and adherence to the required quality standards.



TBrun, LDRA’s automated unit-testing tool, is the only test tool that automates and graphically displays the production of test data vectors with test harness and stub generation completing automatically. By using the Object-box Mode capability of the LDRA tool suite, developers can create test cases for structural coverage of high-level source code and apply these exact same test cases to the corresponding object code.



Because the LDRA tool suite quickly identifies violations, developers can improve the quality of their code, reduce errors found during formal testing, and ensure on-time and on-budget delivery of software. The LDRA tool suite is available for C, C++, Ada 83, Ada 95 and Assembly systems. It is a highly scalable solution that works with large-scale commercial and production systems and is excellent for both legacy code and new code development verification.