Welcome to our Autumn 2009 Newsletter. It seems as though summer gets shorter each year! Over the past six months there has certainly been plenty of doom and gloom news regarding the economy. Hopefully the worldwide recession is ending; it certainly seems that way to us. We are proud to say that Vector Software has continued to grow and distance ourselves from our competition despite these challenging economic times. We have several new employees and a new office in Charlotte, North Carolina. Our very focused approach of building great tools and concentrating on customer support has enabled the company to stay at the forefront of the embedded test tool market.

We have two more Embedded Software Testing symposiums scheduled before the end of this year. Both are in California during the last week of October. For those of you who have not yet attended a symposium, they consist of a half-day session that addresses best practices of embedded software testing. The symposiums include breakfast and lunch as well as a full product-line demonstration of the latest VectorCAST tools on an embedded target. The symposiums offer an opportunity for existing customers to share usage information, and prospective customers to gain a better understanding of embedded test concepts and our technology. You can visit our web site to get venue and sign-up information.

Our next major VectorCAST release will include support for Agile methods, with support for Test Driven Development (TDD) for C and C++. Additionally, system testing of fully integrated applications in a target environment will also be supported. This new feature will allow you to do unit test style testing by stimulating the application functions, not just the external interfaces. Both of these major new features were the result of customer requests.

Finally, we are pleased to announce our first annual VectorCAST Customer Survey. We are planning our product roadmap and want to hear from our customers as to what they find most useful in VectorCAST, as well as what they feel would make VectorCAST even more useful. We know you are all very busy, so we are offering an incentive for you to take the 5 minutes (that is it!) to fill out the survey online. If you complete the survey, we will enter your name in a drawing to win an iPod nano®. We look forward to hearing what you have to say.

Bill McCaffrey
Director of Marketing

Support for Lauterbach TRACE32 Debugger and Simulator Solutions
We have recently added support for the Lauterbach TRACE32 environment. This integration applies to both TRACE32 emulators and simulators.

"Vector Software is happy to bring its VectorCAST solutions to the TRACE32 community" says Bill McCaffrey, Director of Marketing at Vector Software. "We already have the privilege of working closely with several users of TRACE32 at some of the leading companies in Automotive and Aerospace, and the feedback they have provided us was extremely positive, as our integration fully leverages the powerful features of the TRACE32 debugger environment while providing an unmatched level of testing automation on target and simulator. We are looking forward to bringing these advantages to more TRACE32 users in the future".

See the full press release.

Extended Support for ARM
We have recently extended our support for the ARM RealView Compiler environment. The latest release of VectorCAST/C++ now supports version 4.x of the compiler in addition to all previous versions. The integration for 4.x is suitable for a variety of simulator/ boards combinations currently supported by ARM RealView.

Vector Software is a proud member of the ARM Connected Community Program and will continue to refine and expand its offering on the ARM platform.

See the full press release.

Support for TASKING C166 compiler on Infineon chips
We have recently added support for the TASKING C166 compiler. Previous versions of VectorCAST supported the TASKING compiler for 56k chips. The latest release now supports a variety of chips based on the C166 architecture, such as the C167, XC2287 and XC2364.

This latest integration was done in support of a customer from the automotive industry. With the rapid rise of embedded software, all industries are struggling to maintain the highest level of quality. To help them, we intend to keep bringing the benefits of automated software testing to embedded developers across multiple platforms.

See the full press release.

Monthly VectorCAST Webinars
Vector Software is now offering complimentary Webinar sessions designed for you to learn how VectorCAST can be used to automate the testing activities associated with safety-critical embedded software development. These sessions will show you the tools that industry leaders are using to validate their software for safety-critical systems.

To learn more about the VectorCAST webinars or to register, please contact us.

New Target Integrations

TASKING C166

TRACE32

See a full list of Compilers and Targets Supported.

Hoana Medical, Inc. was founded in 2001 as a high tech spin-off of Oceanit Laboratories, a Hawaii-based engineering, science, and research company established in 1985. Today, Hoana is a privately held medical device company with products that passively collect patient vital signs in a bold new way. The company's revolutionary, patented LifeBed™ patient vigilance systems provide non-contact measurement of patient vital signs using sensors embedded in a hospital mattress coverlet, eliminating the need to attach sensors, electrodes, cuffs or other devices directly to the patient.
Hoana's technology sprang from early development work at Oceanit, funded by grants from the US military to develop a Medevac ambulatory monitoring platform. The LifeBed system proved itself in Medevac helicopters where it was able to accurately detect patient's heart and respiratory rates through full body armor in spite of the extreme background noise and vibration.
LifeBed systems are currently being used in the medical surgical wards of hospitals throughout the United States to track patient conditions when the nurse is not in the room. If the LifeBed system detects that the patient's condition is deteriorating or unsafe, it immediately sends an alert through the hospital's nurse call system to bring the nurse back to the bedside.
To date, over 20,000 patients have used the LifeBed system and many have benefited from the positive medical outcomes that resulted when nurses responded to alerts generated by the system.
(See the customer reference poster.)

Tool Tips

Q1 - How can I configure VectorCAST/Cover to work when I am running multiple processes at the same time? VectorCAST supports gathering coverage data...

Q2 - How can I launch a command prompt from within VectorCAST that will have all the necessary variable defines in the command prompt shell? The VectorCAST GUI includes...

If you have more questions like this, maybe our knowledgebase already has the answer. You just need your Vector Software "username" and "password" to access it or register now for access.

Events

Vector Software to host Safety Critical Embedded Software Testing Symposium on Oct. 27, 2009 in San Diego, CA.

Vector Software to host Safety Critical Embedded Software Testing Symposium on Oct. 28, 2009 in Santa Clara, CA.

Vector Software to attend Real-Time & Embedded Conference on October 29, 2009 in Seattle, WA - US.

Vector Software to attend MAE Technical Conference on November 10, 2009 in Reading, UK.

Vector Software to attend Real-Time & Embedded Conference on November 17, 2009 in Washington, DC - US.

Vector Software to attend Real-Time & Embedded Conference on November 19, 2009 in Pax River, MD - US.

If you would like to learn more about our products, please contact us to arrange a demo for your project or register for our Monthly VectorCAST Webinar.