While test is a critical part of product development, it's getting more challenging as products get larger and more complex.
Most engineers want equipment that fully automates setup, configuration, and regression, as well as other tedious tasks. Also, it should be able to quickly analyze test results for sources of failure and communicate these sources to the engineer. It should enable the testers to focus on the hard cases. And, it should test the product as it will be used in the real world.
FanfareSVT can handle all of these chores. Developed by the Fanfare Group, this integrated development environment (IDE) for testing equipment targets equipment manufacturers with embedded software-that makes testing a challenge. Applications include data communications, telecom, medical, consumer, industrial, automotive, aerospace, and defense.
With this authoring system, users invent the test. The software then lets them organize and automate it. And here's the really good part—users can create the test program without having to know how to do programming. The resulting program puts the hardware and software together, then coordinates and automates the testing. It also provides defect tracking and provides for a reporting and analysis output.
FanfareSVT lets users author test cases using the commands of each device in the testbed. These commands, as well as the pass-fail analysis options, are presented in intuitive pull-down menus, accelerating test case development. Customer-specific script libraries also are made available to test developers via pull-down menus, ensuring their test cases are fully leveraging existing automation capabilities.
Also, FanfareSVT captures a test being performed manually and automatically populates the test steps into a spreadsheet-style grid. Users can then edit, execute, debug, document, and analyze these test steps using a desktop application called Test Case Workbench.
Test analysis is streamlined with easyto-read test reports that let users drill down into the root cause of test failures. With this software, the testbed information is defined and maintained separately from the test cases so tests are portable and maintainable across different products and multiple software versions.
With competition in most fields getting tougher every day, the real winners are going to be those companies that can release higher-quality products faster than the other guy. The key is to simplify, automate, and expedite testing.
The Fanfare Group Inc.
www.fanfaregroup.com