Tamir Gefen on ALM

How the Project was Documented

Tamir — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 07:24:32 +0000

How the project was documented

A couple of days ago I attended a lecture and the presenter showed this very famous cartoon about IT projects. It shows how each role in the R&D department misses what the client really needs (if you don’t know it check it out at: http://www.projectcartoon.com/cartoon/1).

The project starts as a swing tied to a tree but when it gets to documentation, there is no tree and no swing, i.e. nothing was documented. This may be funny as a cartoon, but busy documentation professionals probably wouldn’t laugh. The resources allocated to documentation are usually a fraction of what’s actually needed.

Although I’d really like to, I don’t have a great idea for solving all the problems of the documentation department BUT some automation can still be a big help.

With CompBL, one of our add-ons for Rational ClearCase, documentation professionals can get a list of what has changed from the last version, and the programmers bothered to write an intelligible description of why they changed something, then maybe even get a preliminary list of features. In any case, they at least have a list to work from.

I’d love to hear from you if you think this is a significant help to documentation people.

Rational ClearCase supports Ubuntu

Tamir — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 08:19:09 +0000

Good news to Ubuntu community: ClearCase is now officially supporting Ubuntu.
CCRC (ClearCase Remote Client) is supporting Ubuntu as well.

Prerequisite:

ClearCase v7.1.2
Ubuntu 8.0.4 LTS Desktop

To learn more, click here

Enjoy!

Comparing between ClearCase UCM and ClearQuest to Rational Team Concert (RTC)

Tamir — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 05:23:10 +0000

For those who evaluate Team Concert (RTC) and have background working with ClearCase and ClearQuest, I found (Thanks Yaron!) two articles that review the new product and the oldies-but-goodies. The articles, written by Daniel Toczala (Technical lead of the Jazz Jumpstart team) describe the new concept and compare the common terms and the differences. Recommended!

Comparing concepts between ClearCase UCM and RTC: http://bit.ly/9yMwdD

Comparing concepts between ClearQuest and RTC: http://bit.ly/aVh77b

Do you know dbMaestro TeamWork?

Tamir — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 09:14:41 +0000

Last week I saw the dbMaestro TeamWork new version – 2.8 which released couple weeks ago. dbMaestro TeamWork is a database change management solution that helps organization truly take control of the database development process, reducing costs by improving process driven automation, visibility and quality over the database change process.

Its integration with IBM Rational Team Concert (RTC), ClearCase and ClearQuest enhances the ALM solution by covering also changes to the database, if it the table structure, the logic within packages or procedure or even the data of lookup tables.

Integration Features:

Correlate Rational Team Concert projects with database projects
Link database changes/updates with Rational Team Concert activities
Save extended information about database activities within Rational Team Concert
Deploy database modifications in tandem with Rational Team Concert activities

Benefits:

Unified management (and audit) for application source and database changes
Aggregated information about code and database changes within Rational Team Concert
Perfect correlation between business requirement and development actives
End to end deployment process for code and database tasks based on Rational Team Concert activities

You can read more about this product and integration with IBM Rational right here

To read more about its latest features, click here.

Come and Hear me Speak at IBM Israel Annual Event

Tamir — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 12:41:40 +0000

Hi everybody,

I’d like to invite all my Israeli readers to hear my presentation about DeveloperWorks at the IBM Israel Annual Event.

I’m going to talk about how I used DeveloperWorks as a platform to interact with a professional audience, improve GoMidjets products, and form valuable connections that jumpstarted my company.

I’ll be there all day and would love to arrange meetings with my blog readers, let me know at tgefen (at) gomidjets (dot) com

Full details on the company blog

ClearCase: Enabling Setuid Execution on UNIX

Tamir — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:37:21 +0000

Yesterday I was introduced to ClearCase internal script that I didn’ t know before. This script enables the MVFS setuid for VOBs and it helps on a situation where the VOBs storage filesystem is “setuid enabled”, but the VOBs on that filesystems are under “nosetuid” (setuid disabled). Lastly I found the reason and solution in the ClearCase admin manual (V2003.06), not in Google.

Since I didn’t find any refenrence to that script in Google, I give here the explanation I found in the manual, to share it with the others who might encounter a similar problem:

“By default, the viewroot and VOB file systems are mounted with setuid and setgid disabled; this is the recommended configuration. If you must enable hosts to mount these file systems with setuid and setgid enabled (for example, if you run setuid tools from a VOB), you can either configure your release area with the site_prep script to

make this the default for all hosts, or you can run ccase-home-dir/etc/utils/change_suid_mounts to enable it for a single host.

The effects of running change_suid_mounts on a host do not persist across installs, and you must stop and restart ClearCase on the host after running the script. For more information, see the discussion of site_prep in the Installation Guide.”

ClearCase 7.1.1 was released

Tamir — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 07:17:24 +0000

New version includes enhancements for Windows, Sun Solaris, z/OS, UCM and Base (atomic checkin!), CCRC, MultiSite, CCRC and more. Read more…

Microsoft buys bridge for Java, .Net developers

Tamir — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:07:52 +0000

InfoWorld reports that Microsoft is acquiring SourceGear”s Teamprise suite, which lets Java developers build applications via Visual Studio TFS.

Microsoft’s move is in recognition of heterogeneous development shops building in both .Net and Java.

It seems that Microsoft is putting significant efforts into keeping up with its competitors.

Functionality from Teamprise Client Suite will be integrated into Microsoft’s Visual Studio product line beginning with the Visual Studio 2010 IDE.

UNIX / Linux silent install of IBM Rational ClearCase and ClearQuest

Tamir — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:10:37 +0000

IBM Rational support team have just initiated a new video channel in YouTube. Here’s one of the videos, showing how to make a silent install of ClearCase and ClearQuest.

Agile and ALM – Expo 2009

Tamir — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:35:45 +0000

ALM Expo is an online conference sessions and discussions given by CM Crossroads. This year it is focused on the topic of “ALM and Agile in the New Economy”.

Conference sessions:

Taking Travel Search to New Heights – How Travelzoo delivered Fly.com with Agile ALM
Innovation in a New Economy: The Business Imperative for Intelligent ALM
The Agile Heartbeat: Putting Build and Test Center Stage
Smart SCM Solutions For Your Custom Application Lifecycle
Build & Deployment Management in the New Economy

When? October 15, 2009
Where? http://www.almexpo.com