November 2002

In This Issue:

Welcome
Announcing TestTrack Pro 5.0
Surround SCM 1.1 Now Shipping
QA Wizard 1.6 - Automated Testing for E-Business Applications
Migrating from Visual SourceSafe to Surround SCM
The Importance of Branching Models in SCM - Sept 2002 IEEE
TestTrack Pro is a Game Developer Magazine Frontline Finalist
Welcome International Partners
Spotlight: Accessing Surround SCM from Delphi and C++ Builder - EPocalipse Software
New Knowledgebase Articles
Contact Us


Welcome

Welcome to the November 2002 Seapine Software newsletter. As this issue sails over the Internet, we are putting the finishing touches on TestTrack Pro 5.0 (with an entirely new reporting engine, automatic defect routing, and more), Surround SCM 1.1 was just released with even more power and higher performance, and the development of QA Wizard 2.0 for Web, Windows, and Java apps is progressing.

A lot is happening at Seapine, including new partnerships, award nominations, additional product integrations, and new products and services. Read on to learn more and please keep in touch. Your feedback is always appreciated.

Sincerely,

Rick Riccetti
President
Email: riccettir@seapine.com

Now on to the good stuff...

Announcing Testtrack Pro 5.0

We are pleased to announce that TestTrack Pro 5.0 will be available on November 20. TestTrack Pro 5.0 includes the following significant new features:

  • An XSL-based reporting engine with the ability to produce charts and graphs for trend and distribution reports, customizable report layouts (including adding company logos), additional report templates, many more data and sorting options, and additional export options.

  • A powerful new feature, called auto-assignment rules, lets you define defect routing rules based on changes to a defect’s status and other criteria. For example, when a defect is created and the “Project” field contains “XYZ Account,” assign the defect to “Bob Thomas,” the project leader on the XYZ account.

  • New date/time and check box custom field types.

  • User-configurable quick link buttons in the Web interface list windows let you click on an icon to edit a defect, produce a detailed report, etc.

  • The ability to find information by customer, including searching for customer records using customer-specific criteria, and the ability to filter defect records based on customer record criteria (company, beta site).

Other features include administrative control over user display settings, calendar controls in the Web interface, and many other small enhancements and bug fixes.

TestTrack Pro 5.0 is a free upgrade if you have an active Premium Support subscription or if you have purchased in the 30 days preceding its release. Please contact your sales representative to purchase Premium Support.

Surround SCM 1.1 - Now Shipping

Surround SCM 1.1 is now shipping. The newest version offers a number of enhancements including file sharing, history reports, and a preview window that provides greater control when promoting or rebasing files and repositories. Other Surround SCM 1.1 enhancements include the ability to promote and rebase individual files, the ability to search for files based on the current check out status, speed enhancements, third-party IDE support for Visual Studio .NET and Borland’s Delphi and JBuilder, and a Macintosh GUI client compatible with Jaguar (Mac OS X 10.2).

Like before, Surround SCM includes the following major features:

  • A complete change management solution with native graphical and command line interfaces for Windows, Solaris, Linux, and Mac OS X.
  • Reliable, scalable, and secure server support on Windows, Solaris, Linux, and Mac OS X.
  • Advanced branching and merging capabilities.
  • Seamless integration with TestTrack Pro ensures software changes are kept in sync with change requests.
  • SCC compliant. Integrates with Microsoft's IDEs, replacing Visual SourceSafe with a faster, more reliable, feature-rich solution.

Full information about Surround SCM is available at http://www.seapine.com/surroundscm.html.

QA Wizard 1.6 - reducing Valuable Testing Time and Costs

If you develop e-business applications, you need QA Wizard 1.6 for Web applications. No other automated testing solution saves you as much time creating and managing test scripts. And, QA Wizard is backed by a powerful a defect management solution--TestTrack Pro.

Here is what a customer recently shared with us about his team's QA Wizard experience:

  "We successfully use QA Wizard across four different product lines to very good effect in cases where we need to perform repetitive testing actions and to create test data for other non-gui applications that we deploy. Our products, like most web applications, are constantly being revised and we need the ability to write new scripts and to update existing ones on a constant basis; QA Wizard allows us the flexibility we need in QA, in the turnaround times which are expected from management. Additionally, the product has been so intuitive to use that junior engineers can quickly be up to speed in minutes, designing entire test cases and fully automating most of the functionality in our simpler products in just a few hours. I wouldn't trade QA Wizard for any other available product that I'm aware of at this time." -- Sean Whitcomb, Lead QA Engineer, PCNalert  

QA Wizard 2.0 for Windows, Java, and Web is well along in development. The new versions bring the power and ease of use of the popular Web version to Windows and Java developers. We are on track to begin testing in December, with widespread availability in January.

Migrating from Visual SourceSafe to Surround SCM

Migrating from SourceSafe to Surround SCM - Surround SCM provides significant advantages over Visual SourceSafe including flexible branching models, fast remote access, support for multiple operating systems, a reliable client/server architecture, and much more. This document explains the differences between the two products and describes how easy it is to migrate your data from SourceSafe to Surround SCM.

The Importance of Branching Models in SCM

"If you want to improve software quality, you must first understand your software. What are its pieces? How are they organized and related to one another? If you do not understand your code base, your odds of updating it without breaking something are poor." - IEEE Computer, September 2002

Surround SCM's advanced design supports many branching models. This September 2002 IEEE Computer article reprint describes how the branch-by-purpose model offers better support for parallel development efforts. Click here to download the article: The Importance of Branching Models in SCM

TestTrack Pro is a Game Developer Magazine Frontline Finalist

The fifth annual Front Line Awards continue Game Developer's tradition of honoring excellence and innovation in tools for game development and recognizing companies like Seapine Software, which are advancing the state of the art. As games have become more and more sophisticated over the years, so have the development tools used to make them. The Front Line Awards recognize those software and hardware companies whose tools enable faster and more efficient game creation. Every year, the best of the game industry's development tools mirrors the evolution of the game industry itself. TestTrack Pro is a finalist for Game Developer Magazine's annual Frontline award. The winners will be announced in the January 2003 issue of Game Developer Magazine.

Read more about how Seapine is helping the game industry deliver high-quality games

Welcome New International Partners

Seapine is pleased to announce we have new partners in the United Kingdom, France, India, Italy, Norway, and Sweden to better serve our customers in those countries. The partners will be contacting our customers in their respective countries to introduce themselves and their services. Feeling left out? Additional partnerships will be announced shortly in other countries.

  France Ideo Technologies
  India Infomatics SET
  Italy Stargroup SRL
  Norway FoxData AB
  Sweden FoxData AB
  United Kingdom Contemporary Software

Spotlight: Accessing Surround SCM from Delphi and C++ Builder - EPocalipse Software

Are you developing software using Borland's Delphi or C++ Builder? EPocalipse Software (http://www.epocalipse.com/) specializes in tools and add-ins for Borland's development IDEs.

EPocalipse SourceConneXion provides IDE integration between Surround SCM and Borland Delphi and C++ Builder. Not currently using Surround SCM? SourceConneXion also works with SourceOffSite, StarTeam, PVCS, Perforce, CVS, ClearCase, MKS, QVCS, and CS-RCS, which coincidently are all supported by TestTrack Pro.

New Knowledgebase Articles

Seapine's knowledgebase is a great place to begin your search for answers to technical support questions for our products. It is also a great place to get ideas on how to extend your use of our products (using ODBC to query TestTrack Pro for example.) The following articles were added recently:

Q00107

Optimizing TestTrack Pro Performance in Large-scale Environments
Problem: TestTrack Pro customers with enterprise environments need to enhance TestTrack Pro's performance due to the large number of users accessing the databases.

Q00106 Customizing TestTrack Pro Web Field Labels
Problem: You customized the word defect, or its variations (Defect/defect, Defects/defects, Defect(s)/defect(s), but the changes do not appear in the TestTrack Pro Web interface...
Q00105 Integrating CVS with TestTrack Pro
TestTrack Pro integrates with CVS by executing commands to the CVS.exe program. The CVS.exe program must be run globally because TestTrack Pro cannot determine where the program is located. To run CVS.exe globally, either set up a path to CVS.exe in your autoexec file or copy CVS.exe into your SYSTEM32 directory...

Contact us

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