BRIGHTON, MICHIGAN: Pillar Technology has addressed the lack of unit test coverage in legacy Java J2EE applications, and solved the extreme hassle and cost of manually written tests.

Pillar released Verdé, a tool that automates the characterization testing of all Java J2EE applications, recording JUnit tests dynamically at run time. The velocity of development teams using test-driven software development techniques improve by a significant margin when leveraging the automated capability of Verdé. Clients using the Verdé tool report a 70 percent reduction in the cost of manually produced JUnit code.

Since the first public implementation of the Java programing language in 1996 and J2EE in 1998, most of the Java code was written without the benefit of modern day Test Driven Development techniques (TDD). These legacy applications become difficult to maintain, as Java developers struggle to keep brittle applications running.

Verdé monitors and records live data in Java applications and produces actual JUnit characterization tests, either integration tests, or isolated tests using one of Verde's Mocking adapters.

"Leveraging Verdé allows you to create a safety harness for your existing applications." said Gary Gentry, CEO of Pillar Technology. "Imagine the ability to make significant modifications to your code base with the comfort of knowing that your existing functionality isn't at risk."

Verdé currently has adapters for JUnit 3, JUnit 4, EasyMock, and JmockIt, as well as an open adapter APR for unique testing needs.

"Verdé provides greenfield test coverage in situations where there are no other signs of life." continued Gentry. "If you're scared to touch your legacy Java code for fear that you may break something, then Verdé's technology breakthrough is great news for you."

Unlike the static code analysis tools that generate theoretical data combinations and attempt to discover possible failures in an application, Verdé, produces tests that use real business data to lock in current behaviors the business relies on in the production environment today.

Pillar Technology's automated Verdé solution empowers Java developers to lock in their applications current behavior before implementing a change, ensuring the quality of changes made to the application.

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