IBM OLIVER (CICS Interactive Test/debug) - History

History

OLIVER was written in 1972 by Ken Dakin, an independent CICS specialist (who also later produced SIMON (Batch Interactive test/debug), in response to a lack of suitable interactive debugging features in CICS. At the time, most CICS applications were written in IBM Basic assembly language and CICS had no features to prevent storage violations. As a result, errors in application programs frequently caused full CICS dumps and aborted the CICS session for all users. As more customers began using both COBOL and PL/I applications, the software supported these both at the assembly level and at source level from information collected at compile time.

Both OLIVER and SIMON were integrated with Viasoft Inc.'s static analyzer "VIA/Insight" to form the product "VIA/SmartTest", in the late 1980s. The combined product provided additional functionality to COBOL programmers, and the product is still in use at many IBM mainframe sites worldwide today, and is now (2012) distributed by Allen Systems Group as "ASG-SmartTest".

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