Rational Team Concert Now Supports Dependency Builds for IBM i

Published: June 12, 2012

by Alex Woodie

IBM's new Rational Team Concert (RTC) version 4 will save IBM i developers time by allowing them to use the dependency build feature of the RTC product. In addition to a new release of RTC, IBM unveiled version 4 releases of Rational Quality Manager, Rational Requirements Composer, and its Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM) suite at last week's annual Collaborate conference.

RTC is an application lifecycle management (ALM) tool that allows teams of developers to work together more efficiently. The product, which IBM first unveiled three and a half years ago, offers source code tracking for RPG, COBOL, Java, and other languages; build management and deployment functionality; workflow tracking and project management, among other functions.

With version 4, IBM added new scanners to RTC that enable it to fully support the dependency build, promotion, and deployment process on the IBM i platform. Using dependency builds saves time by only building artifacts that have changed since the last successful build. The features is now available to IBM i and z/OS customers who purchase an additional RTC license, called Developer for IBM Enterprise Platforms.

RTC version 4 brings many other features, including support for high availability clustering, which requires RTC to run on WebSphere Application Server Network Deploy. IBM is also allowing the server component of RTC 4.0 to run with version 3.x clients, which it says is necessary because it's unrealistic to expect all developers to migrate to the new product at the same time.

Managers get new capabilities designed to help streamline the oversight and planning of complex development environments, including the capability to share development plans across projects. Meanwhile, a new Kanban "taskboard" should help managers optimize the flow of work in agile or lead development teams by answering questions such as, "Where is capacity available?" and "Am I exceeding my desired limits?"

This release of RTC also includes better support for Microsoft Windows projects; support for the Firefox and Safari Web browsers on the Mac OS/X platform; more granular read permissions for software configuration management (SCM) data, a new SCM delete operation, and more flexible SCM load rules; SCM support for the Microsoft Source Code Control Interface API; support for the Hudson/Jenkins build engine; and other enhancements.

RTC is one of three components that make up the Rational CLM suite. IBM also unveiled version 4 releases of the other two components, Rational Quality Manager (RQM) and Rational Requirements Composer (RRC), were also unveiled, as was CLM version 4.

RQM helps to automate the entire testing and quality assurance (QA) process for development teams. The software helps organizations to plan, execute, and report on tests, and mange the entire testing workflow for all stakeholders, including developers, analysts, and testers.

RQM 4.0 brings new dashboard "viewlets" that let users see the status of test construction and execution. IBM says it has also improved the product's test planning capabilities thanks to new test case attributes and views, and improved its project management capabilities through new templates. It also brings better support for manual test scripts, and new reporting and e-signature capabilities.

RRC helps teams of developers to capture, define, analyze, report, and manage requirements originating from customers, partners, and regulations through a "wiki-like" environment that is fully traceable. Like RTC and RQM, it requires the WebSphere Application Server and the Apache Web server, and runs on a variety of databases, including DB2/400.

With RRC 4.0, IBM has introduced new features designed to improve customer focus and the management of requirements through new project-level dashboards and automatically identifying and parsing requirements. It also now supports clustering (through WebSphere Application Server Network Deploy), and enables more fine-grained information access and write-permission control. Project templates can now be shared using the Requirements Interchange Format (ReqIF).

CLM 4.0 includes the features found in the version 4 releases of RTC, RQM, and RRC. In addition, it brings additional features, such as support for high availability clustering; server rename functionality; incremental deployment support; and cross-repository process sharing.

The version 4 releases of RTC, RQM, RRC, and CLM were announced on June 4, and become available for download today. In IBM i environments, the new version 4 releases require either IBM i 6.1 or 7.1; i5/OS V5R4 is no longer supported.

For more information, see the following IBM announcement letters for RTC 4.0, RQM 4.0, RRC 4.0, and CLM 4.0.

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