On October 3rd, Coverity announced Coverity 5.5, a new release of their development testing platform, along with integration with major ALM vendor HP. Coverity provides static analysis of machine code uncovering defects early in the development lifecycle.
Though code analysis is available for Java, C, C++ and C# code, Coverity has a growing user base in the Java community. Coverity has a booth at this week’s JavaOne conference and attending are Jennifer Johnson, Coverity’s VP of Product Marketing and Zach Samocha, VP of Product Management.
I spoke with Johnson and Samocha about how the announcement will affect the Java community. Johnson explained the importance of seamless work flow that Java developers are looking for in ALM solutions.
What we’ve seen historically in the static analysis market is that if the technology doesn’t seamlessly fit into the developer work flow and slows them down, developers aren’t going to adopt the tool, especially in Java where they’re under extreme time-to-market pressure, [and doing] Agile development [and] iterative testing. They need to be able to test their code in a way that’s not intrusive.
We’ve created a series of integrations either into our platform or out into other development tools into the Java tool chain to help the Java workflow.
Integrations that Java users specifically will be interested in are those with the popular open source tool FindBugs, the Eclipse IDE, as well as with Jenkins Continuous Integration Server.
Samocha said they are receiving very positive customer reactions from the Java community, with their support of Android and mobile testing as well as their integration with FindBugs, Eclipse and Jenkins.
I think [users have wanted] the adoption of open source technologies within knowledge enterprises which has been a challenge so far, so it’s been a big push from the customer base and we’re getting really good feedback from the actual users at the JavaOne conference.
Samocha emphasized that Coverity 5.5 has introduced a big performance improvement with up to 10x improvements in analysis speed.
Coverity 5.5 also integrates with Visual Studio IDEs and, of course, the biggest integration announcement, HP’s ALM tool suite.
Gartner analyst Tom Murphy said of the HP integration:
For Coverity, it is really about the relationship with HP which is hopefully broader market access. From an HP perspective as they try to move into a stronger overall ALM market they need better connection to developers so this provides a nice connect from the developer world and view of code quality, now integrated into the overall view of quality.
And Theresa Lanowitz, Founder and Analyst at voke, inc. noted the integration of HP and Coverity as complementary:
ALM solutions are not a “one size/one vendor fits all” philosophy. Innovative technologies from a variety of vendors prove to be complementary in a number of areas for ALM vendors. The Coverity/HP ALM integration is a perfect example of that complementary effect. Coverity has an innovative solution that solves a classic computing problem. HP has an ALM solution that focuses on traceability throughout the lifecycle. The two vendors have technology that is completely complementary and delivers complete insight on quality throughout the lifecycle. Most importantly, the traceability of assets and the visibility of code quality prevent egregious issues and defects from reaching production and impacting the brand and the business.
When asked if this trend will continue, Lanowitz answered:
We should expect to see more ALM integrations with complementary technologies to solve some very difficult problems. IT organizations should be actively evaluating and adopting these complementary solutions. IT organizations should also make sure they are on the latest release of the tool sets they use. Recent releases have made significant advancements and will deliver strategic value to an organization when used effectively.
