HISTORY

Founded in 1977 by Dr. Edward Miller, Software Research has helped over 15,000 users at over 1,900 sites produce higher quality software. Software Research has pioneered test technology since its founding in 1977. From 1977 to 1984, SR's main business was education, consulting, and presenting seminars for clients interested in software quality control.

The success of the seminar business, supported in part by a respected technical newsletter (Testing Techniques Newsletter, now available as the TTN-Online Edition since 1994) that has been circulated worldwide since 1977, led to the drive and commitment of the company to become the leader and world center of technical excellence in the creation and application of software testing tools.

PRODUCTS

Much of the test services activity required development of specialized software analysis tools. Increasingly, projects began to be based on exploiting the same or similar test tool functions. Beginning in 1982, some of these internal tools became the focus of more rigorous development, aimed specifically at preparing them for sale as packaged programmer productivity products. Serious development of products began in 1985, and in 1990, Software Research completed the transition from a services-only to a pure product company with the introduction of the what later became the TestWorks software testing product suite.

TECHNOLOGY

Software Research has in part "written the book" on software test methods, test support tools, and test techniques and their effectiveness. Software Research has established a leadership position in the field of automated software testing, coverage analysis, risk analysis and software quality control. The company is firmly committed to retaining this leadership position through the continuous upgrading and expansion of TestWorks Technology and functionality of products and by providing the services necessary for its customers to be successful.

TestWorks tools incorporate a number of unique and powerful technologies:

Compiler Based Analysis Methods. SR's Coverage Analyzers for UNIX and Coverage Analyzers for Windows are built using the latest object oriented compiler technology. Besides producing professional level error messages and providing extremely efficient operation, our coverage analyzers are not subject to the technical limitations imposed on systems that use formal grammars and lexical analyzer generators such as lex/yacc.

Multi-mode Capture and Playback Technology. SR's Regression and Capture/Playback systems for UNIX are built using special-purpose access to publicly available X11 extensions such as Xtrap and XTestExtension1 but are augmented to provide such unique features as our Automatic Output Synchronization (AOS) for TrueTime mode playback. SR's systems also use industry standard versions of the Motif Xt library to capture ObjectMode recordings.

Similar systems exist to support Regression and Capture/Playback for Windows that run on all of the Windows platform varieties (Win 3.1x, Windows '95 and Windows NT).

Build-In OCR Technology. For processing of captured images or partial images we have built in a commercially available OCR engine. By providing true OCR capabilities -- not just a "simulation" of OCR behavior -- we assure the maximum reliability of playback behavior in complex regression suites by making OCR based synchronization and analysis character size and font independent.

Powerful, Convenient Command Language. SR has incorporated dynamic interpreted "C" as the basis for our command processing in our regression test controllers and in our capture playback systems. Interpreted "C'" as a command script results in cleaner scripts that are easier to modify and offer the alternative of direct compilation for efficiency when necessary (using the product API's).

Database Compatibility Built In. Internal design of TestWorks products has been made with SQL compatibility in mind.

Addition of the SQL server underlayment extends the already powerful and extensible system to full generalized database operation.

SR FIRSTS

Below is a compilation of some of SR's firsts in the software testing market:

• First commercial capture/playback system, CAPBAK, for MS-DOS in 1987.
• First commercial test control system, SMARTS, for MS-DOS and UNIX in 1987.
• First all-technical high-quality non-commercial conference devoted to software testing, Quality Week 1988 (QW88).
• First commercial test coverage analyzer, TCAT, for C on the NCR Tower-32 in 1988.
• First commercial ASCII-terminal capture/playback system, CAPBAK/UNIX, in 1989.
• First (and, so far, only) commercial true path-coverage analyzer, TCAT-PATH, in 1989.
• First commercial capture/playback system for XWindows, CAPBAK/X, in 1990.
• First commercial captured-image comparator system, EXDIFF, in 1991.
• First commercial test coverage analyzer for C++, TCAT/C++, in 1991.
• First commercial test coverage analyzer to handle multi-tasking and exceptions for Ada and C, TCAT/C and TCAT/Ada, in 1992.
• First software test-tool vendor with over 4000 installed licenses, at over 1750 sites, and supporting well over 10,000 seats, in 1994.
• Full ``C'' language capture/playback technology with CAPBAK/MSW, in 1994.
• Seventh International Software Quality Week conference draws over 600 attendees in 1994.
• Eighth International Software Quality Week draws over 700 in 1995.
• First full test suite available for all three Windows platforms, 3.1x, '95, and NT (3.5x, 4.x) in 1995.
• TestWorks is the first family of integrated test suite solutions for embedded, GUI and Client/Server Applications on Unix and on MS-Windows platforms, in 1995.
• Ninth International Software Quality Week draws over 825 in 1996.
• Tenth Anniversary International Software Quality Week in San Francisco draws over 850 in May 1997.
• First TCAT's for Java for UNIX and Windows platforms introduced in 1997.
• First International Software Quality Week/Europe in Brussels draws over 200 in November 1997.

QUALITY WEEK

To bring together users and interested parties for a technical meeting, and for Software Research to maintain awareness of the relevant research in the field, the company formed a not-for-profit subsidiary, SR/Institute, to run yearly conferences. In 1988 the First Annual International Software Quality Week was held and drew more than 50 people. Quality Week attendance has continued to grow every year to over 850 attendees at the Tenth Anniversary International Software Quality Week in May 1997. 1997 also saw the introduction of the First International Software Quality Week/Europe, held in Brussels in November 1997.

The Quality Week Conferences have achieved wide acclaim in the professional quality community for their unique blend of technical content, industrial experience, and practical advice in all matters of Software Quality. Quality Week 1998, 26-29 May 1998 in San Francisco is expected to be a sellout event!

FOUNDER

Through the IEEE Computer Society and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Dr. Miller has authored several revisions of software testing and automated tools books, and has chaired many technical conferences including the Quality Week conference series begun in 1988. He has been a Distinguished ACM Lecturer, was a regular IEEE Tutorial Leader, and has been a frequent contributor to technical conferences.

Miller has held a number of professional positions, has served on a variety of conference technical program committees, is a frequent conference keynote speaker, and recently has been involved in the US software technology arena as an elected member of the Board of Directors of the National Software Council.

CORPORATION

Software Research, Inc. is a California corporation headquartered in San Francisco, California. Almost all US Domestic sales are conducted from SR's Headquarters. SR's TestWorks product line is sold outside the USA through a worldwide network of International Distributors

Outside Board of Directors members are Dr. Robert Larson, Partner in Woodside Fund and Jean-Pierre Wolff, EVP of ElectroTest, Inc. Inside Board of Directors members are Edward Miller, President and Rita Bral, VP/Communication.