June 4, 2012 -- Mentor Graphics Corp. has announced support for the newly approved Accellera Systems Initiative Unified Coverage Interoperability Standard (UCIS) version 1.0 via the Questa UCIS API library. Mentor made the original donation of the Questa Unified Coverage Database (UCDB) application programming interface (API) specification, which was selected as the basis for the now ratified standard.

The UCIS API allows utilities to be developed to perform ranking, merging, analysis and reporting that is vendor independent. Within the Questa verification platform, this database API has been used as the basis of the Questa Verification Management (VM) tools, which include these utilities plus many more higher-level applications such as testplan tracking, trend analysis, results analysis and regression management. In addition to the standard coverage models for all metrics generated by Mentor tools, the API supports third-party and user coverage access to the Questa Unified Coverage Database (UCDB). This openness let users and partners bring coverage data from other languages and tools into the UCDB.

Questa Vanguard Partnership (QVP) program participants have immediate access to the Questa implementation of the UCIS API to access the coverage database to promote sharing of verification results and help users determine if their verification goals have been met using the Questa VM solution. Adoption of the standard is enhanced with a migration path from the original UCDB API to the UCIS API that allows current integrations continued access to existing UCDB databases. QVP members have immediate access to Questa VM extensions like testplan management that offer another level of integration beyond what is supported by the standard today.

"Test and Verification Solutions' asureVIP development program has seen vast improvements in productivity, efficiency and delivery quality using Questa VM built on UCDB, the basis for UCIS," said Mike Bartley, founder and CEO of TVS. "With the presence of this fundamental enabling technology, now a standard, it relieves us of the need to develop complex scripts to manage coverage output."