The Latest Static And Dynamic Analysis Tools

June 11, 2009

Designers can take advantage of a host of new static and dynamic code analysis tools from different vendors. Coverity has a range of static and dynamic analysis tools, but its Coverity Build Analysis addresses an aspect that is key to

William G. Wong

Designers can take advantage of a host of new static and dynamic code analysis tools from different vendors.

Coverity has a range of static and dynamic analysis tools, but its Coverity Build Analysis addresses an aspect that is key to the development process but often overlooked—the build process. It helps Coverity stand out from the pack in addition to helping prevent bugs in the build process by identifying issues such as using the wrong object file during a build.

LDRA Software Technology recently released the v8.0 LDRA Tool Suite. This end-to-end development suite integrates with third-party requirement management tools. It includes TBvision, which checks for security vulnerabilities, bugs, and programming standards such as MISRA C and C++ and the CERT C secure coding standard.

Klocwork Solo from Klocwork brings Java static analysis to individual developers. It complements Klocwork’s enterprise solutions that are comparable to other vendors. Solo addresses a range of security vulnerabilities in addition to other types of bugs.

Polyspace Release 2009a is part of an array of product announcements from the Mathworks that includes Matlab and Simulink. Polyspace looks for runtime errors in C, C++, and Ada code. It can prove the absence of problems such as overflow and divide-by-zero.

The GrammaTech CodeSonar 3.4 static analysis tool adds a range of new checkers including Power of 10 based on a set of rules developed by Gerald Holzmann, director of NASA/JPL’s Laboratory for Reliable Software. It can also be integrated with bug tracking systems like Bugzilla.

Of course, there’s a range of open-source projects such as PMD, a static analysis tool that works on Java applications. It checks for bugs and addresses issues such as dead and duplicate code.

So check out some analysis tools if they aren’t in your toolkit. They will save you time in the long run.

COVERITY • www.coverity.comGRAMMATECH • grammatech.comKLOCWORKS • www.klokworks.comLDRA • www.ldra.comTHE MATHWORKS • mathworks.comPMD • pmd.sourceforge.net

About the Author

William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

You can send press releases for new products for possible coverage on the website. I am also interested in receiving contributed articles for publishing on our website. Use our template and send to me along with a signed release form.

Check out my blog, AltEmbedded on Electronic Design, as well as his latest articles on this site that are listed below.

You can visit my social media via these links:

I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.

I still get a hand on software and electronic hardware. Some of this can be found on our Kit Close-Up video series. You can also see me on many of our TechXchange Talk videos. I am interested in a range of projects from robotics to artificial intelligence.