Monday, June 29, 2009

Comparing TestStudio and TestStand..Not!

Comparing TestStand and TestStudio at this point is...impossible. At the momment, I'm still waiting on the official PO to go to Teradyne so that they will be so kind as to give us the software we're buying. We have sent them 10% of the PO for long lead items but that isn't enough insurance to actually get the software.

It's starting to wear thin, I just want to learn a little about this monstrosity called TestStudio. I am assuming it is a steaming pile of ... code. Until I actually get to see a copy of it, I'm not going to change my opinion.

Once I get to play with TestStudio I really am going to compare it to TestStand. Okay, I do have one bit of pre-knowledge of TestStudio that I can compare to TestStand. Any parameters passed out of TestStudio to a DLL or other code is only allowed to be passed in Character strings. TestStand does it right and passes the value in the form it needs (i.e. integers, doubles, pointers, etc).

Last week the score was TestStand 2, TestStudio -2. The score is now TestStand 3, TestStudio -3 for TestStands ability to pass parameters correctly and Teradynes unwillingness to allow people who are going to use it to actually use it.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

TestStudio, Hmmm...

It's been a while, I've doing a lot of playing with my Genetic Algorithms program, writing a Neural Net program, and studying Chaos.

First, Congratulations to the Wendy, former Queen of CVI. She's moved on MIT, graduate school, and opportunities up there. Way to go!

Second, Welcome Adri K, the new Queen of CVI and all NI things Text. Everyone needs to go to NI Week and say hi to her or the NI CVI community.

Now to the meat of the subject. TestStudio, not TestStand but TestStudio.Teradyne's offering in the test sequencing arena. It seems to be cheap knock off of TestStand put out by Teradyne. This is the product we'll be using on our next test set. It was not my choice or the choice of anyone who will have to develop on it.

Since this choice has been made for use and I've been told to accept it, I want to write about comparisons between TestStudio and TestStand.

First comparison...none. Teradyne, who is apparently very big on keeping the purchaser of the product in the dark, will not allow us to have an evaluation copy or access the support site until they get their PO.

We are told it's great, or at least the only product that will run its proprietary switch manger. We're also told the switch manager is a .dll. .dll's will run under TestStand, so why is TestStudio the only way to run the switch manager?

I guess I'll have to wait until we actually get the software before I can compare it. Since TestStand allows a 30 day evaluation and TestStudio doesn't, plus we can't get to the support. Is Teradyne's product so bad they can't even allow people to evaluate it?

TestStand 2, TestStudio -2. Negative since I can't even get to any documentation except Propaganda sheet.