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ALY printstream anALYzer

AFP Printstream Analyzer

Aly is a high-performance AFP analyzing tool for producing state-of-art quality assurance of documents. With Aly, document versions are well-guarded against unforeseen traps -- new machines, new versions of 3rd party software and ever- changing document requirements will always arrive, but... Aly will let you sleep well all the while.

Aly printstream anALYzer...

Pinpoints problems in the document generation process

Catches faults while the print is still on disk and not yet on paper

Kicks in at the last stages, therefore covers all the preceding steps

Can be used to build a regression testing environment for documents

Is ideally suited for integration with versioning/project tools

Works in conjunction with any document generator/formatter

Directly uses IBM's AFP ©architecture

Is pure ANSI C = portable and fast

Why We Count On Aly?

After upgrading formatter or bundling software, it is quite usual for us to check if the output is still produced according to their standards. In the past, a slow (and unsafe!) compare of printed sheets used to be the only alternative. Printshops would simply rely on good faith that everything would still work for all possible cases with the introduction of each new version.

ALY is the solution - a high-performance AFP analyzing tool which compares AFP data streams by their actual (semantic) contents and gives you a detailled list of all differences.

We are pleased to offer you ALY - ALY has become an indispensable tool for us and will also give you security with all release changes and software upgrades.

What Aly is used for?

Aly reduces costs in document management by introducing testing techniques well- proven in general software development to the printing domain.

Quality assurance with Aly printstream analyzer :-

Saves valuable developer time spent on testing

Can prevent defective print runs

Aly pays for itself with the very first major fault it detects that would otherwise have gone productive. In this way, you can gain a quick and precise way to learn exactly how a "new" version behaves as compared to a "reference" version.

How it Works?

Aly proofs two printstreams against each other. That's it. No magic here.

Aly can produce useful listings of printstreams for the technically savvy.

How It Is Used?

One simple process of safe document versioning consists of these three steps:

Assume you have a working document generation system. There is a "test case" made up of a complete set of input constituting one "version". Let's call this the "reference" version and consider it correct.
Apply a certain change to the generation process, thereby producing a "new" version. Now the trouble starts. High volume commercial document production can be complex and mistakes happen. And mistakes in big runs cost big money. Unfortunately there is no way to manually check 1000s and 100,000s of pages - what you usually do is look where you most expect problems, check as many as you can and hope for the best.
Enter Aly:

Run the test case with your "reference" version, producing spool one.

Run the test case with your "new" version, producing spool two.

Let Aly proof these two spools against each other to turn your hope into certainty.

With these three steps we can safely move from one version to the next well-guarded against any hassles introduced by changes in hardware/software or new requirements.

Aly is available for...

IBM Mainframes: z/OS, OS/390, Linux

iSeries: OS/400, i5/OS, AIX, Linux

Unix Servers: Sun Solaris, AIX, BSD, Linux

PC Servers: Microsoft Windows, Sun Solaris, BSD, Linux

Apple Workstations: Mac OS, Linux

Others (VSE, VM, DEC, HP/UX,...) on request