InterTest Reviews

It's just a way to debug COBOL programs. In the CICS world, it's a primary debugging tool.

Programmers can verify their changes more quickly, identify any kind of logic mistakes in the program more quickly.

The line by line debugger of program logic for COBOL programs.

It allows you to do as much testing as you're required to do, to pretty much guarantee that when a program goes into production it's as error-free as possible. None of them are completely ever free, but as error free as possible.

I don't see how it can be improved. It's fine just the way it is.

I would say stability is about a nine out of 10, because we do occasionally come up with an issue that we need to contact the support center for help with.

Scalability would depend on how a customer uses it. For the way we use it here, there's no issue at all in scalability, it's fine.

You can have as many users as you like using it. Sometimes they'll "step on each other" if there are two applications that are testing in one particular region, one could cause some type of a storage overlay and that will hamper another customer trying to do something in the same region.

I would rate tech support at 10 out of 10. The folks that I've gotten on the phone know the product really well, and they're always able to help and find solutions.

It's not really complex at all. It's a basic set up, like any other product that you would use with the CICS. It comes with an install guide, and if you have any questions, I'd call the support center. I think they're very helpful.

It was here when I started, with the person that was mostly supporting it and installing it, so I had no choice. It's just what product we use.

It's good. It serves its purpose and it's pretty dependable.

I gave it a 10 out of 10 because it gets installed and we don't have very many issues with it. If we did have an issue with it, and I can't work with the program to resolve it, I'll get help from the support center. They usually resolve it pretty quickly.

Whenever there's a code issue that we want to debug, any data-related problem or code-related problem, we use this tool.

As much as coding of a program is required to improve an organization, it is also necessary that you have the ability to walk through the code, and make sure the code does what you really expect it to do. So as much as the code is important for my organization, debugging that code is also important.

After the fact, that our business requirements have been designed and coded, we check to make sure the coding is done right. So it doesn't really tell us about our new products and the features for business, it's more on the developer side. This doesn't drive the business. This helps us to make sure the business is going to be okay.

The product is good. I don't really want to minimize this into listing out what features of this product; the product on the whole is totally a great product.

We only go after releases of this product that are generally available, or globally available. They call them "GA" versions, which means they have been out after development for a while, the product is already stabilized. So there are zero issues in terms of stability of this product, because we go a little bit of time after the new product is settled, a new release is settled. We don't do a lot of catch-ups with the new development going on. We wait for a stable version to pull that in.

The scalability goes alongside how you design your application. We have multiple regions, or test regions, where we use this product. The scalability goes within each region's sizing. It's not quite anything that the product can influence or damage, so the scalability is controlled outside the product. There are no limits. It's good for how we installed it.

One of the best in industry. I would give them a 10 out of 10. Great guys, very good in following up, responding back. We've been dealing with them more frequently. They're really great guys to work with.

This question probably goes beyond my time in this organization. This is one of the handful of tools available to develop code, or capture issue logs. I don't know what other challenges that have been faced by anybody else to make sure this is the right product. Ever since I've been involved, we have been using this product.

CA has a great installation handler that is in a very user-friendly. Still,it's not a quick and easy product. You have to follow several steps to get through the installation. It takes a good bit of time to do that, so there is the procedure laid down by CA, and then there is a procedure that we have in-house to customize things to our needs, across multiple test regions.

So the set up is not an easy one, but it has well-formed documentation provided by CA. They help us go through any questions we may have. They are available around the clock for us, so they make it do-able, rather than sit there and scratch your head. So it's not an easy set up, but it is a do-able set up.

We use it to go through the code. InterTest is also bundled with SymDump. We see this as a bundle. They are always together for us. So InterTest is used for debugging process, walking through the code, checking data conditions and code flow. SymDump is used for the fact, after a problem occurs. SymDump catches what point in time the problem occurred, all the other connecting data, and points us to the code to indicate what caused the situation. Is the code the problem, or is the data the problem, or is it a configuration problem? So SymDump helps us to identify, determine the root cause of the problem.

CA has done a fantastic job with this product, all the time. I don't really think there is anything that I could think of as room for improvement. They're the best in the industry, they're doing good. Keep up the good work.

It is a very good product. I'm sure whatever the cost is, it's worth it, because it has the ability to pinpoint exactly where the problem is within the code, or the data, or in the system set up. So I highly recommend this product for any shop. Also, the customer service is one of the best, so they've got our back. Don't worry about the customer service here.