The authors use this paper to showcase their test coverage tool, eXVantage. In addition, however, they provide a comparative overview of 17 open-source and commercial test coverage tools. While these tools also implement a wide variety of other features that could be helpful to testers, their point of commonality is that they all generate coverage metrics of some type. The information used in the comparison was obtained only from documents in the public domain.

The comparisons presented cover a number of important areas: languages supported (mostly C, C++, and Java), types of coverage metrics reported (statement, decision, method, and class), reporting (for example, via a graphical user interface (GUI) or file-based reports), and whether or not there is any assistance with the automatic generation of test cases.

The information, in particular the comparison tables, provides an excellent starting point for anyone wishing to gain an initial insight into what facilities are currently available in this important area of software quality management. However, a much more detailed study would be needed before making any commercial selection decision, for example. It would also have been helpful if a table had been provided that categorized the tools as either commercial or open source.

The paper is easily accessible, and will be of interest to a wide range of technical readers, from researchers in software testing tools wanting to know what the competition is already providing, to managers wishing to learn about the facilities such tools provide.