IBM Rational Test RealTime overview

IBMIBM® Rational Test RealTime is a complete test and runtime analysis tool set for systems development created in any cross-development environment. Rational Test RealTime provides tools for automated component testing, code coverage, memory leak detection, performance profiling, and UML sequence diagram tracing.

Systems development includes (but is not limited to) embedded, real-time and/or technical systems development. And this type of software is often performed in conjunction with the larger scope of a systems engineering activity. Rational Test RealTime is a cross-platform solution designed specifically for developers creating software applications for products of embedded (for example, mobile phone, medical device, handheld global positioning system, and so on), real-time (for example, aerospace, automotive or telecommunications control system), and other technical systems applications for example, simulated research computation and advanced grid computing systems).

Implementing a practical, effective and professional testing process within your organization has become essential because of the increased risk that accompanies software complexity. The time and cost devoted to testing must be measured and managed accurately. Very often, lack of testing causes schedule and budget overruns with no guarantee of quality. Critical trends require software organizations to be structured and to automate their test processes. These trends include:
  • Ever increasing quality and time to market constraints.
  • Growing complexity, size and number of software-based equipment.
  • Lack of skilled resources despite need for productivity gains
  • Increasing interconnections of critical and complex embedded systems.
  • Proliferation of quality and certification standards throughout critical software markets, including the avionics, medical, and telecommunications industries.
The latest release of Rational Test RealTime integrates with Rational Quality Manager to provide a more collaborative approach to product software development and testing. Rational Test RealTime is the most complete automated developer testing solution available on a wide range of host and target platforms. In addition, new integrations with other popular development tool environments allow developers to work in the environment of their choice. This enables the powerful testing capabilities of Rational Test RealTime to be used early in the product software development lifecycle because it is part of the developers daily work environment.

Target deployment port technology

Target deployment port (TDP) technology is a versatile, low-overhead mechanism that enables target-independent testing and runtime analysis with limitless target support. As a key component of Rational Test RealTime, TDP technology allows your tests be run directly on your target embedded hardware.

Each TDP is customized to accommodate your compiler, linker, debugger, and target architecture. Tests are independent of the TDP, so that the tests don't change when your environment changes. For example, you can run the same tests and code on the embedded hardware or on your local computer by switching the TDP and rebuilding the project.

Target deployment ports are designed to strongly reduce the data communication and runtime overhead that can affect your embedded systems when tested, while being versatile enough to adapt to any cross-development environment (RTOS, compiler, debugger, target communication) within a very short time.

DO-178B/C Qualification Kit

All Rational Test RealTime customers have access to the Rational Test RealTime DO-178B/C Qualification Kit, which can be submitted with your other project artifacts to meet DO-178B/C compliance requirements. The Qualification Kit covers unit testing for C and Ada languages, coverage for C and Ada languages and code review for C language (MISRA 2004).

For more information about DO-178bB/C support, contact IBM Rational® Customer Support via this link: http://www.ibm.com/software/rational/support/.


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