25 January 2010
Dundee software company launches first product
X-Ray Legacy Code to reveal software secrets
A software development company 'spun-out' of the Space Technology Centre at the University of Dundee is set to release its first product.
Rapid Quality Systems Ltd was founded in September 2009 and is based in the Business Incubator at the University. The company’s first product, 'Code Rocket', is aimed at making it easier to develop and analyse complex computing code.
The company’s chief executive is Russell Kay, a veteran of Dundee’s computer games industry who has worked with Real Time Worlds and headed his own games company Visual Sciences, in the process helping developing classic games such as 'Grand Theft Auto' and 'Lemmings'.
Russell sees the formation of Rapid Quality Systems as a sign of how the city is capable of innovation in other areas of computing.
'Dundee obviously has a fine core of talent working in computer games and the creative industries, but with Rapid Quality Systems we are showing that there is a broader base of talent here,' said Russell.
'What we are working on are software development tools that can be used right across the computing industry. With `Code Rocket’ we have developed a tool that makes it much easier for people to analyse and document complex pieces of code, particularly what is known as 'legacy code'.'
'This is code that may have been in a system for some time and where the original programmer may long since have moved on. Code Rocket helps identify how that code works and what it does. We have developed this for the major programming languages being used across a whole host of disciplines, so the potential uses are widespread.'
The Space Technology Centre at the University processes large amounts of data and has had to develop some unique computing tools to cope with the unique demands of its operations.
'The Centre is a great example of an operation which has a lot of code to maintain, a lot of it generated over many years of its activities, and Code Rocket is ideal for maintaining and documenting all of that,' said Russell.
NOTES TO EDITORS
About Rapid Quality Systems Ltd.
Rapid Quality Systems is a spinout from The University of Dundee, Space Technology Centre (http://spacetech.dundee.ac.uk/), founded in September 2009 by Dr. Steve Parkes and Craig Ramsay (CTO - Rapid Quality Systems). Russell Kay is the Chief Executive Officer and Alan Faichney is Chairman.
Contacts for Rapid Quality Systems Ltd.
Russell Kay, +44 (0)1382 225613,
Russell.Kay@RapidQualitySystems.com
About the Space Technology Centre, University of Dundee
World leading research on spacecraft technology has been going on in the School of Computing at the University of Dundee for over a decade. This has led to the SpaceWire standard which is being used in many spacecraft by space organisations across the world, and the PANGU planet and asteroid simulation tool which is being used by ESA to help design navigation systems for future planetary landers. Environmental data from satellites has been received at Dundee since 1978 resulting in an extremely valuable archive of data for environmental change monitoring and other applications. The Space Technology Centre was formally opened by Lord Sainsbury in 2005 and the Satellite Receiving Station joined with the Remote Sensing Group at Plymouth Marine Laboratory to form the NERC Earth Observation Data Acquisition and Analysis Service in 2007.
For media enquiries contact:
Roddy Isles
Head, Press Office
University of Dundee
Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384910
E-MAIL: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk
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