Why invest in Cantata?
Benefit from accelerated
unit and integration testing with
Industry leaders use Cantata to produce high quality, safety standard compliant or business critical embedded software, in the most cost effective way.
If embedded software is the main differentiator in your products, or critical to the running of your business, you want to deliver software reliability through cost effective testing.
Industry leaders across all safety related and business critical sectors, have already invested in Cantata. Every day they are getting a competitive advantage over those yet to benefit from automated unit and integration testing.
When doing nothing is the higher cost option.
To continue testing the hard way with manual tests, in-house or legacy tools, can be a lot more expensive than buying a suitable tool that makes your testing effective and efficient.
Investing in Cantata makes doing unit and integration testing easier, enabling organisations to:
Cut the cost of standards compliance
Reduce the risk of software failure
Lower testing costs
Shorten time to market
Why unit test with Cantata?
By testing units (defined as the smallest testable part of an application) Cantata pinpoints failures more precisely than larger system tests on complex applications. This means that errors can be fixed quickly and cheaply. Complex applications will always be more difficult and expensive to integrate and system test when the component units do not work correctly, so testing the units reduces these downstream costs and makes them more predictable.
- Automated test framework allows developers to fully test units on target, as soon as code is written.
- Complex applications can be verified by unit tests, which are cheaper than system tests to develop and maintain.
- Test case generation, flexible editing, powerful diagnostics, and tool integrations make developers efficient testers.
- Continuous integration and provides an efficient safety net against breaking existing code.
- Unit tests with integrated code coverage, quantify project progress.
For more information on the benefits of unit testing see our white paper
Why integration test with Cantata
Cantata enables developers to test the interactions between units working as a group. Cantata integration tests can be performed with software (SiL), hardware (HiL) or processor (PiL) in the loop, with no technical limitation on scalability.
Cantata makes integration testing more effective
Correct internal and external sequences can be easily verified
Choice of entry point into integrated group, gives more test scenario flexibility
All inputs and outputs between units (parameters and data can be automatically checked
Interfaces between calls can be intercepted and checked, not just simulated with potentially false assumptions
User code can be easily added to C/C++ test script at a wide range of test control points
How can Cantata cut the cost of standards compliance?
Cantata meets all the testing requirements of software safety standards. Providing a single solution for dynamic unit and integration testing on host and target platforms.
Certification of development tools can be a heavy compliance cost burden. Cantata has been independently certified by SGS-TÜV SAAR GmbH providing a tool certification kit with everything needed out-of-the-box, available free of charge.
Compliance with the dynamic test requirements of software safety standards is complex and time consuming. Cantata provides comprehensive guidance on how to use its powerful feature set to accelerate meeting all standard specific test requirements.
How does Cantata reduce the risk of software failure?
Product recalls and infection of the wider brand and corporate reputations, can far exceed the development cost of individual applications. Unit testing is the most thorough way to test application code and prevent bugs in shipping devices.
Project over-runs can be mitigated by shifting verification earlier in the lifecycle to unit testing, reducing the risks of delays when integrating proven components.
Fitness for purpose litigation against companies and individuals is now an increasing risk. Where companies fail to employ accepted industry practices like thorough unit testing with Cantata, they cannot use the “state of the art” legal defence against such litigation.
How will Cantata lower my testing costs?
Testing earlier lowers costs by minimizing re-work dependencies on the whole code stream. Developers can immediately identify defects with Cantata unit and integration testing as soon as each component is available.
The high cost of unit and integration testing standard compliant software can be dramatically lowered through automation. From framework set-up through test case generation and execution on host/target platforms to diagnostics and results production, Cantata automation makes these cost effective.
Integrating tools into a toolchain can have hidden testing costs. Cantata’s tight integration with cross-compilation environments and intuitive C/C++ code tests in Eclipse GUI or code editors, make it easy to slot into any toolchain, and fast for developers to learn.
How does Cantata shorten my time to market?
Industry leaders recognise the need to ship faster without endangering quality. Cantata tests provide two key time advantages for Development Managers. Team collaboration and efficiency is improved with structured consistent tests and certification ready reports. Integration times are more predictable and shorter when integrating tested individual software components.
Why Cantata is better than any ‘free’ open source tool?
Unlike open source tools Cantata is specifically addresses the safety and business critical technical needs of end users, whilst providing ease of use and powerful diagnostics to make unit / integration testing as efficient as possible. Commercial grade tool quality is guaranteed with significant functional and productivity advantages over open source tools, whilst still offering very high levels of customization. Professional technical support is provided as well as comprehensive documentation, so time is not wasted trying to make the tool do what you need it to.
Cantata is pre-certified for many safety related standards; open source tools can be qualified or certified as suitable or usable in a safety related context. However the costs associated with such an exercise (defining requirements for the tool, developing and running tests against those and demonstrating the tool operates correctly in the end users environment), are prohibitive.
Existing investment in legacy open source test scripts implemented in C/C++ (e.g. CppUnit and CxxTest), generically known as xUnit can be re-used and embedded inside Cantata tests. This has the advantage of retaining all the existing test cases, whilst supplementing them with the more powerful features of Cantata.
For more information on the comparative benefits of testing with Cantata rather than an open source tool, see our white paper
How much will it cost to invest in Cantata?
Cantata is competitively priced with flexible licencing models to enable you to choose the best option for your business.
Cantata comes with comprehensive user documentation, the Eclipse user interface and tests in the C/C++ languages together with tool integrations actively reduce the tool learning curve. A one-year maintenance and support contract is included as standard with most licence packages and includes free upgrades as well as dedicated help from our team of experts. A 2 Day on-site training course can also be provided to kick start tool roll-out.
For more information on license and service pricing options, please contact us