VisiComp Announces Availability of Total Recall Debugger for Java
RetroVue 1.1 Java Visualization Tool Introduces New Features Along with Revolutionary
Roll-Back Debugging Capabilities
Felton, CA, (July 29, 2002) - VisiComp, Inc., a provider of innovative software development tools for Java development and support, today announced the availability of its new product, RetroVue 1.1, the world's first Total Recall debugger for Java. Unlike conventional debugging tools, RetroVue keeps track of every operation executed by the program being debugged, allowing the user the unique capability of "rolling back the clock" to any previous instant in the program's execution and review the state the program at that point in time.
"The work the folks at VisiComp have done is truly spectacular," said James Gosling, creator of Java, after seeing RetroVue in action. "It has a strong opportunity to dramatically improve the software development process."
RetroVue 1.1 takes advantage of VisiComp's award-winning runtime software visualization technology to display the inner workings of any Java program in a unique graphical format that displays the state, execution, and thread interactions of their program, allowing developers to easily trace elusive bugs back to their root cause. After capturing the journal of an executed program, RetroVue allows the developer to rewind or fast-forward through the execution to search for particular conditions or variables and to observe the relationships between the source code, the state and the dynamics of the threads. Rather than using mere text, RetroVue presents the program's inner workings in a format that allows for easy pattern recognition, reducing the time that a developer must spend tracking down a specific bug.
"A recent survey found that 83.3% of respondents felt that a quality debugging capability is of critical importance in a Java tool, and only 19% were satisfied with their existing tools," said Ron Hughes, founder and CEO of VisiComp. "Given that the Java development tool market will soon exceed $1 billion, it's going to be more critical than ever for a growing Java development population to have the right resources, and RetroVue is our answer to this growing market need for advanced Java tools."RetroVue is built using three key elements which create a unique environment and functionality: the ability to instrument the software to capture the detail, analyze the detail, and present the detail and analysis interactively through an advanced user interface.
Engineering organizations, from architects and developers to QA engineers and managers, benefit from more reliable code, faster development cycles, and enhanced group collaboration. By creating journal files that capture elusive bugs, RetroVue gives managers the freedom to distribute and assign bugs to the best developer for each particular problem. Developers can utilize RetroVue's journal capturing capability to find and communicate information about bugs to others within their work group. RetroVue also allows developers to more easily find and fix their bugs even before their work is passed on to QA. Software managers benefit from the ability to optimize and balance their development resources by applying specialized or highly skilled programmers to the tough problems and by bringing new developers up to speed quickly, providing them with context and perspective through the visualization of executing code.
The latest version of the debugger, RetroVue 1.1, works with arbitrarily large execution journals, and includes new usability features that address the needs of beta customers.
"Our early technology evaluators were blown away by the usefulness of a debugger with a memory," said Hughes. "For those customers that wanted to use the debugger on especially lengthy programs, we developed a disk-based model in the new product that allows the debugger to work with huge journals."
In addition to the command line launcher, a GUI launcher has been added along with a project save/load capability, making RetroVue easier and more intuitive to use."I'm quite impressed with RetroVue," said Iain Shegeoka, president of Messaging Logic. "The option of using a GUI launcher or a command line is great. I found it extremely powerful to instrument and gather debug information on my 'headless' server application under Linux and Windows using a GUI and analyze/debug it later on my Mac. I'm actually having fun debugging in RetroVue."
"I was amazed at how easy RetroVue was to use," commented Brian Sletten, Systems Architect with Parabon Computation. "Clearly, it's one of the better products that I've tested in beta." And Tom Heagy of Scientific-Atlanta, Inc. said, "The visualization of threads is terrific. Knowing when a thread is active/locked etc, is a terrific asset and one that I've never seen before."
RetroVue 1.1 is available immediately from VisiComp's website at http://www.visicomp.com.
About VisiComp
VisiComp, Inc. is a premier provider of advanced runtime software visualization tools for Java developers. VisiComp's patented technologies increase Java programmers' productivity and reduce software development costs and time-to-market. The company's products, including VisiVue, a runtime visualization tool, and RetroVue, a next generation runtime debugger, are focused on providing visibility into the detailed internal operations of complex software systems. Based in Felton, California, the company was founded in 1999 and distributes its products worldwide via the Internet at http://www.visicomp.com.
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Java is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. VisiComp, VisiVue and RetroVue
are trademarks of VisiComp, Inc.
Colin Crook
Senior Account Associate
Convergent Technologies Group
Neale-May & Partners
409 Sherman Ave.
Palo Alto, CA 94306
650-328-5555 ext. 132
FAX: 650-328-5016
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