Agitar Software Tests Product to Write Code

Agitar Software plans to ship a software testing product next year that will test a developer’s code and, if necessary, automatically generate alternate bug-free and more efficient code, according to an executive of the company.

The current version of its product, Agitator, automatically analyzes and tests code as it is written by developers, and identifies flaws and possible workarounds, said Jeff Pope, Agitar’s vice president for the Asia Pacific region.

“We are looking at a product that will present code to developers, as a different way of doing the same thing,” Pope said.

The current version of Agitator provides data to developers and advises on writing better and shorter code, but the new version will actually show the developer the alternative code, he added.

The product is focused on helping development teams control quality as they write software, instead of finding and fixing bugs at the end of the development process.

The process, called unit level developer testing, gets the bugs out in the early stages, at the level of individual code units, rather than at the final quality-assurance stage, according to Pope. It costs US$16 to find and fix a bug in the software coding stage, as compared to about $2,500 to find and fix the bug after the deployment of the software, he said.

Agitar’s other product, called Management Dashboard, gives development teams information about the status of quality at the level of individual code units.

Agitar, a startup located in Mountain View, Calif., is also planning next year to introduce support for Microsoft’s .Net environment on its products. “We haven’t yet had a lot of customer pull for it yet,” Pope said.

Currently, Agitator supports only the Java programming language from Sun Microsystems, because 70 percent of software development is still done in Java, Pope said.

Agitar expects India to be its second-largest market after the United States by the end of next year, because of the large number of software outsourcing companies in the country. Cutting down on development time, reducing bugs and developing quality software are very important objectives for these companies, Pope said.

-John Ribeiro, IDG News Service (Bangalore Bureau)

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