Coverity Source Code Analysis Suite Enables Microsoft Developers to Find COM-Specific Defects
New Microsoft Component Object Model (COM) checkers solve quality control problem of complex COM-based distributed systems

SAN FRANCISCO, February 21, 2007 – Coverity, Inc., makers of the world's most advanced source code analysis solution, today announced new features and updates to Coverity Prevent designed to help Windows developers produce high-quality, secure software. Coverity developed new defect checkers for their flagship product to enhance analysis of Windows applications and detect critical programming errors that could cause system crashes and memory leaks due to common COM-related mistakes. By leveraging the Coverity analysis engines, the new checkers cover 100 percent of software paths and accurately pinpoint defects.

This release is especially important to Windows developers faced with the challenge of building COM-based distributed systems where the complexity can be an order of magnitude higher, and the task of finding defects with manual procedures can take months.

New checkers include capabilities to detect incorrect type conversions, incorrect usage of wrapper classes, and reference counting mistakes, errors which can lead to memory leaks, system crashes, or unpredictable program behavior. The checkers can easily scale to quickly analyze tens of millions of lines of code on a daily basis and have very high accuracy rates with low false positive results. Enhancements to Prevent's understanding of standard Windows libraries allow existing checkers to find even more high-value defects in code written on the Windows platform.

"Coverity offers the only technology that can effectively find COM-related defects that are some of the most costly and difficult issues for Windows developers," said Ben Chelf, CTO of Coverity. "Coverity's analysis extends beyond the standard language constructs of C and C++ to encompass programming idioms, data types, and libraries specific to the Microsoft environment. Our technology creates the most complete model of COM software available and uses this to produce the most accurate source code analysis developers can use. These are critical considerations for busy programmers that refuse to waste time chasing down false positive results."

New features in Coverity Prevent include:

• Specific checkers for Microsoft Component Object Model (COM) source code that detect defects which can cause memory corruption, memory leaks, system crashes, or unpredictable behavior;
• Support for the latest versions of Visual C++;
• Microsoft Windows API models which enable Prevent to detect more defects with more accuracy in Windows-specific source code;
• Improved mapping of Microsoft APIs to enable Prevent to better understand interactions between customer software and Microsoft libraries.

Coverity Prevent is the most widely used source code analysis system on the market, in use at more than 200 companies. In addition to Windows environments, Coverity Prevents works with a range of operating systems and compilers. The company offers support for eight different operating systems, including Linux, Mac OS X, and Solaris. Coverity Prevent can be integrated with 15 different compilers, including GCC, Intel compiler for C/C++, and Wind River Diab Compiler.

About Coverity
Coverity (www.coverity.com), the leader in improving software quality and security, is a privately held company headquartered in San Francisco. Coverity's groundbreaking technology removes the barriers to writing and delivering complex software by automatically finding and helping to fix critical software defects and security vulnerabilities as the software is written. More than 200 leading companies choose Coverity because it scales to tens of millions of lines of code, has the lowest false positive rate and provides 100 percent path coverage. Companies like Juniper Networks, Symantec/VERITAS, McAfee, Synopsys, NASA, Palm and Wind River work with Coverity's tools to find and fix security and quality defects from their mission-critical code.

Coverity is a registered trademark, and Coverity Extend and Coverity Prevent are trademarks of Coverity, Inc. All other company and product names are the property of their respective owners.

Media Contacts

Craig Oda
Page One PR for Coverity
coda@pageonepr.com
+1 650-565-9800 x702

Russ Wood
Director, Corporate Marketing
rwood@coverity.com
+1 415-694-5304