Computer-aided software testing company Compuware Inc is signalling a strategic change of direction with the launch of File-Aid/PC, its first testing tool for the MS-DOS environment. UK marketing manager Peter Sedgwick says that MS-DOS is now a mature environment for developing applications for the mainframe environment and Compuware therefore thought the time was right to launch a testing product. However, Compuware does not believe that the end of the day is coming for the mainframe testing products, since developers will always need to test their applications in the run-time environment on the mainframe. Nevertheless Compuware has come to appreciate that developers now need an environment that enables test data to reside in both environments in a common format. As the developers using the MS-DOS product will be Cobol programmers, File-Aid/PC displays data using Cobol record layouts as templates. This benefit hampers Common User Access compliance somewhat although Compuware has managed entry-level compliance by putting CUA guidelines at the bottom of the screen. The product is not stand-alone, it works with File-Aid Hostmanager on the mainframe and transfers VSAM and IMS data into a format suitable for testing in the Micro Focus Plc Cobol/2 Workbench and Stingray IMSVS86 environments. Data is downloaded by a copy-like instruction and while it is being downloaded it can be converted from EBCDIC to ASCII. Sedgwick expects to pull in new Compuware users by offering this MS-DOS tool, since he does not believe competitors have products to address this product gap.
