Mercury links up - Mercury Interactive Corp.'s 'Design for Quality' initiative for testing the graphical user interface development tools of various vendors - Field Report: Industry - Brief Article

Software Magazine, Nov, 1993 by Jack Vaughan

Mercury Interactive Corp., a Santa Clara, Calif.-based maker of automated graphical user interface (GUI) test software, will collaborate with leading makers of GUI development tools to maintain software quality while cutting development times.

Partners in Mercury's "Design for Quality" initiative include Neuron Data, Inc., Palo Alto, Calif.; Visix Software, Inc., Reston, Va.; XVT Software, Inc., Boulder, Colo.; Integrated Computer Solutions, Inc., Cambridge, Mass.; Imperial Software Technology (IST), Reading, England; Visual Edge Software, Ltd., Quebec; and Non Standard Logics, Inc., Boston.

According to Amnon Landan, Mercury's chief executive, the initiative includes technical collaboration between Mercury and each GUI tool vendor, as well as joint marketing activities. The collected GUI tool makers have agreed to embed Mercury's testability protocol into their products. Mercury will support the application programming interface (API) for each GUI builder's product.

Said Landan, "We teamed up with the companies to provide hooks into their toolkits. This enables the end user to quickly develop front ends with tools from the GUI builder, and to use our technology to generate tests that work at the [object] level." Landan reported that 20% of Mercury's customers are independent software vendors; the balance comprises large organizations that develop their necessary GUI software applications internally.

Although Mercury's plan initially includes an assortment of GUI tool vendors and a single test tool house (Mercury), Landan said the Mercury test protocol will be available to makers of competing test tools.

"We have plans to open our API. We are in the process of making it public," he said. Mercury's products cover Unix/X and MS-Windows platforms. Collaborations such as the Mercury initiative could lead to a greater integration of test activity into the early portion of the development cycle.