Anyone have experience with CompuWare analysis tools?

NTDEV
1

We are considering using CompuWare BondsChecker and TrueCoverage Driver
Edition. Has anyone had any experience with these tools? If so what do you
think about the tools. Are they worth the $3500? How much more do
verification they give me than PreFAST, HCT, CUV, etc…? Any information
or opinions would be helpful. Some of our drivers are boot drivers, does
this matter?

We’re also considering Bullseye for code coverage. Any one have any idea
how this compares to TrueCoverage? From looking at the forum, people seem
to prefer it over TrueCoverage.

Thanks,

Jonathan

2

When I used BoundsChecker I found that is primarily gave me a bunch of
tracing data on what my driver was doing, interesting but not too useful.
I’ve not used TruCoverage yet but my read on it is that you need a copy per
developer to use, I.E the suite works on a sevelopment development or test
machine at a time.

I have used Bullseye for 7 years at various customers. One thing I
particularily liked was that you could build a binary and ship it to an end
user to collect data. The only thing special is to install a data file for
the driver on the users machine.

–
Don Burn (MVP, Windows DDK)
Windows 2k/XP/2k3 Filesystem and Driver Consulting
Remove StopSpam from the email to reply

“Jonathan Ludwig” wrote in message
news:xxxxx@ntdev…
> We are considering using CompuWare BondsChecker and TrueCoverage Driver
> Edition. Has anyone had any experience with these tools? If so what do
> you think about the tools. Are they worth the $3500? How much more do
> verification they give me than PreFAST, HCT, CUV, etc…? Any information
> or opinions would be helpful. Some of our drivers are boot drivers, does
> this matter?
>
> We’re also considering Bullseye for code coverage. Any one have any idea
> how this compares to TrueCoverage? From looking at the forum, people seem
> to prefer it over TrueCoverage.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jonathan
>
>

3

My experience with TrueCoverage (or whatever their tool is called that does
the same thing as Microsoft’s KernRate) was that I installed it a year ago
and it didn’t work. Since KernRate gave me what I needed, I didn’t worry
much. I complained to Compuware and, after some time, they told me they can
reproduce the problem and they’ll be fixing it and letting me know. A year
has passed and I asked them about the status. And the reply was to get the
newer version of DriverStudio. So, I suggest to make sure with them that it
indeed works, before paying for it, see below.

From: Fusee, Sanford [mailto:xxxxx@Compuware.com]

Sent: Thursday, 06 May, 2004 13:42

I check the bug report and the engineer is currently working on the issue.

He has not given any time frame for completion. As soon as I hear any news
I will get back to you .

Sent: Monday, 04 April, 2005 22:40

To: ‘Sanford Fusee - Support Replies (Sanford Fusee - Support Replies)’

Has it been fixed? It’s been awhile…

From: Fusee, Sanford [mailto:xxxxx@Compuware.com]

Sent: Wednesday, 06 April, 2005 12:43

I looks like this has been corrected mainly because I can not get it to

break now and I was before with the older version. There is an updated

version of DriverStudio now version 3.2. You should contact your sales rep
to get and update.

“Jonathan Ludwig” wrote in message
news:xxxxx@ntdev…
> We are considering using CompuWare BondsChecker and TrueCoverage Driver
> Edition. Has anyone had any experience with these tools? If so what do
> you think about the tools. Are they worth the $3500? How much more do
> verification they give me than PreFAST, HCT, CUV, etc…? Any information
> or opinions would be helpful. Some of our drivers are boot drivers, does
> this matter?
>
> We’re also considering Bullseye for code coverage. Any one have any idea
> how this compares to TrueCoverage? From looking at the forum, people seem
> to prefer it over TrueCoverage.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jonathan
>
>

4

The only added value bounds checker has over checked-build+driver-verifier
is that you can see the call stack for every memory allocation and not only
the address from which the allocation was issued. It’s a nice feature, but
hardly worth the expense.

As for a coverage tool - boolseye coverage is cheaper, easier to use and
uses a better coverage analysis approach.
(www.bullseye.com/lineCoverage.html)

Shahar

“Jonathan Ludwig” wrote in message
news:xxxxx@ntdev…
> We are considering using CompuWare BondsChecker and TrueCoverage Driver
> Edition. Has anyone had any experience with these tools? If so what do
> you think about the tools. Are they worth the $3500? How much more do
> verification they give me than PreFAST, HCT, CUV, etc…? Any information
> or opinions would be helpful. Some of our drivers are boot drivers, does
> this matter?
>
> We’re also considering Bullseye for code coverage. Any one have any idea
> how this compares to TrueCoverage? From looking at the forum, people seem
> to prefer it over TrueCoverage.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jonathan
>
>

5

I’m beginning to forget, even three months is time enough if
you’re deeply into something else. And I risk attracting flak by
omitting features that were highly praised by my ex-colleagues.
But with BoundsChecker you can, for example,

  1. Set it up to catch that intermittent faults at 3pm in the
    morning, and pop into the debugger so that when you come into
    the office you have the fault right in front of you.
  2. React to faults or to events by packing up information
    that can be sent in real time to a development site. We called
    it “BoundsChecker for Dummies”, and it makes a whole lot easier
    to package information and send to those pesky support guys.
  3. Catch events on a remote machine. BoundsChecker,
    TrueTime, TrueCoverage, DriverMonitor, they’re distributed
    software.
  4. Log an exhaustive and configurable set of events for
    further off-line analysis or for on-line periodic query.
  5. Run from inside MSVC.NET 2002, 2003 or 2005 as an
    integrated tool, including its menus and toolbar.
  6. Have the debugger analyze the event list you captured.
  7. Be updated from OS to OS or from Service Pack to Service
    Pack by replacing one .dat file.
  8. Be tightly integrated with the debugger.
  9. Be reconfigured on the fly through a friendly set of
    visual property pages, without the need for a reboot.

Now, True Coverage,

  1. Does live coverage at run time: no need to recompile,
    relink or rebuild your code.
  2. You can analyze code even if you don’t have symbols or
    source code (even OS code!).
  3. Gives you a 2D and a 3D flow diagram of the target
    software. The 3D diagram is animated, I wrote it myself using
    OpenGL. :slight_smile: Mind you, we built that flow diagram from pure
    machine code.
  4. Can do coverage analysis on software running on a remote
    machine.
  5. Runs from inside MSVC.NET 2002, 2003, or 2005 as an
    integrated tool, including its menus and toolbar.
  6. Can be updated from OS to OS or from Service Pack to
    Service Pack by replacing one .dat file.
  7. Is guaranteed to coexist with the debugger and with
    BoundsChecker because it uses the same “Capt’n Hook” hooking
    engine.

I could go on. Believe me, there’s some value in those pieces of
software too; they’re distributed applications, well integrated
with MSVC.NET and with their native DriverWorkbench shell. At
least, heck, my team and I put a whole lot of work over many
years to get these things running!

Alberto.

----- Original Message -----
From: “Shahar Talmi”
Newsgroups: ntdev
To: “Windows System Software Devs Interest List”

Sent: Sunday, August 07, 2005 6:25 AM
Subject: Re:[ntdev] Anyone have experience with CompuWare
analysis tools?

> The only added value bounds checker has over
> checked-build+driver-verifier is that you can see the call
> stack for every memory allocation and not only the address
> from which the allocation was issued. It’s a nice feature, but
> hardly worth the expense.
>
> As for a coverage tool - boolseye coverage is cheaper, easier
> to use and uses a better coverage analysis approach.
> (www.bullseye.com/lineCoverage.html)
>
> Shahar
>
> “Jonathan Ludwig” wrote in message
> news:xxxxx@ntdev…
>> We are considering using CompuWare BondsChecker and
>> TrueCoverage Driver Edition. Has anyone had any experience
>> with these tools? If so what do you think about the tools.
>> Are they worth the $3500? How much more do verification they
>> give me than PreFAST, HCT, CUV, etc…? Any information or
>> opinions would be helpful. Some of our drivers are boot
>> drivers, does this matter?
>>
>> We’re also considering Bullseye for code coverage. Any one
>> have any idea how this compares to TrueCoverage? From
>> looking at the forum, people seem to prefer it over
>> TrueCoverage.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Jonathan
>>
>>
>
>
>
> —
> Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at
> http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256
>
> You are currently subscribed to ntdev as: xxxxx@ieee.org
> To unsubscribe send a blank email to
> xxxxx@lists.osr.com