CA-EZTEST was a CICS interactive test/debug software package distributed by Computer Associates and originally called EZTEST/CICS, produced by Capex Corporation of Phoenix, Arizona with assistance from Ken Dakin from England.
[citation needed] The product provided source level test and debugging features for computer programs written in COBOL, PL/I and Assembler (BAL) languages to complement their own existing COBOL optimizer product.
[citation needed] A single "rogue" application program (frequently by a buffer overflow) could accidentally overwrite data almost anywhere in the address space causing "down-time" for the entire teleprocessing system, possibly supporting thousands of remote terminals.
This was despite the fact that much of the world's banking and other commerce relied heavily on CICS for secure transaction processing between 1970 and early 1990s.
The difficulty in deciding which application program caused the problem was often insurmountable and frequently the system would be restarted without spending many hours investigated very large (and initially unformatted) "core dump"s requiring expert system programming support and knowledge.