How to Choose a Testing Tool

Customization: All tool vendors claim that their products can be configured to handle company coding standards. But the extent to which this is possible in practice varies enormously. When evaluating tools, always send the vendors a variety of code samples to process.

Metrics: Not all tools give the same figures for the same metrics. When evaluating tools, ask vendors to process some code for which you have calculated the metrics by hand. The subsequent discussion of their results w ill be revealing. In addition, some metrics correlate to a certain extent with simple lines of code measurements. Given these problems, there is little sense in spending lots of money on a tool that calculates only metrics.

Visualization: This is essential when working on path coverage. Good tools provide facilities for graphically viewing the results, highlighting statements or paths that have not been executed.

Analysis of conditions: Look for tools that analyze the conditions needed to reach a given block of code and that even go as far as suggesting values that variables must take. This can be useful when looking at nested conditions.

Language support: Unless your company has applications written in a variety of languages, a tool designed for a specific language will invariably provide better results than a generic tool set.