Intrinsa Grabs Sun's Attention

Testing tool saves money by identifying bugs early in development cycle

By Rich Levin

esting tool vendor Intrinsa Corp. has inked a deal with Sun Microsystems to use its Prefix automatic bug detection and reporting tool. Terms of the licensing deal, which will be announced this week, were not disclosed.

It's the third major win for the Mountain View, Calif., startup. Intrinsa clinched similar deals with Netscape Communications and Informix Software in recent months. The deals didn't come cheap for these early adopters of Intrinsa's object- and component-oriented automated testing technology: Prefix costs $40,000 for a 10-developer license. It supports C-languages and runs on HP-UX and Sun Solaris. A Windows version is expected soon.

Users say the product's innovative "software component simulation" facility identifies a wide range of bugs early in the development cycle. That lets programmers fix problems before final code is delivered to testers or shipped to users.

"It pushes back bug detection to before the integration step, which is a cost saving," says John Fetter, diagnostic engineering department manager at Sun. "Testing costs increase an order of magnitude each step along the way. If you can find the bugs while the code is still with the developer, those costs are absolutely the lowest of test costs."

Another benefit for developers: Prefix does not require test cases, source-code modifications, specialized programming, or changes in development styles or methodologies-features that also set it apart from other source-code analysis tools. "It's highly automated," Fetter confirms. "My developers didn't have to change our source code or perform other preprocess work."

The tool will initially be used to aid development of hardware diagnostics tools for users of Sun's Solaris operating system.

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