MacA&D 7.3 Adds XML, Integrated Test Files and Enhanced Traceability

Excel Software began shipping a major upgrade of MacA&D, the industry’s
leading software design tool for Macintosh. MacA&D 7.3 adds XML support,
integrated test documents, more flexible requirements traceability and
enhancements to its scriptable HTML reports.

XML ( eXtensible Markup Language) has become a popular industry standard
for exchanging information that is human readable, platform independent and
somewhat self-explanatory. XML is stored in a text file using tagged data
values and is widely supported by editors, browsers, parsers and other
third party tools. All MacA&D design documents can be listed as XML files
or imported from XML files. This includes class models, object models,
state models, process models, structure models, data models, task models,
screen models, data dictionary, and requirements.

Developers create test designs and procedures to provide structure to the
testing process. MacA&D adds the ability to create test documents with a
built-in text editor or by configuring it to use another application like
Microsoft Word. Test documents can be linked to requirement and use case
entries or to diagram objects. This smooth integration and traceability of
test documents throughout the requirement specification, analysis and
design process can improve developer productivity and testing efforts.

Large projects are often partitioned into many documents, spread across
multiple folders containing thousands of linked objects. MacA&D has
powerful link management features that tightly and efficiently integrate
project data. Requirement and use case entries can be linked to design
models, text specifications, code files, HTML files, test documents,
foreign documents or to other requirement entries.

MacA&D’s HTML report generator is a popular way to generate standard and
custom reports of project data. The scriptable report generator adds
features for XML and test documents. New XML scripting tags allow any piece
of data from any MacA&D document to easily be included in a generated
report. Likewise information from test documents or links between documents
can be included.

MacA&D runs on all Macintosh computers with 64 MB RAM and MacOS 7.0 or
later. It comes in four product editions; Standard $495, Desktop $1295,
Educational $845 and Developer $1995. Site license pricing, product
descriptions and online ordering are available at www.excelsoftware.com.
For technical brochures or questions, call 505-771-3719.