Remain Ties TD/OMS Into IBM’s Rational Team Concert

May 6, 2014 Alex Woodie

Remain Software this week announced new integration points between its IBM i change management solution, TD/OMS, and IBM‘s Rational Team Concert offering, which also provides elements of change management for IBM i environments.

Remain says the integration between the two products, which becomes available this month, is designed to give customers more choice and flexibility in how they develop, test, and deploy IBM i applications.

“Our goal is to give them choice and let them decide what is the best way to manage their applications’ lifecycle,” Remain managing director Marco Kok says in a press release. “IBM RTC is a widely known and popular solution; therefore, it was obvious for us that TD/OMS must be able to connect with it.”

TD/OMS is Remains’ flagship application lifecycle management (ALM) tool for IBM i developers. The software, which has been in development since 1989, is composed of multiple components, including the core Object Management System (OMS) that guides users through the process of defining applications and their associated objects. Surrounding this “kernel” are associated modules for reporting, impact analysis, work management, code distribution, client management (Eclipse tooling), and a variety of 4GL interfaces for LANSA‘s RDML, CA‘s 2E and Plex, AS/SET, and Magic Software‘s 4GL.

In 2013 Remain started branching out a bit with Project Gravity, which added workflow and task management capabilities, while also enabling Remain customers to store the source code repository on other platforms besides IBM i. The new integration with IBM creates overlap between Gravity and IBM’s RTC, Kok says.

“We expect that some may ask, why do we do it [connect to RTC] if we also have our own in-house developed workflow and task management solution, called Gravity,” Kok says in the press announcement. “Our answer is that it is also a matter of giving freedom and choice between RTC and Gravity. It is the customers’ choice what works best for them. We just give the options.”

Remain says one of the advantages of the new RTC integration is the way in which applications continue to be designed and built in TD/OMS. “The TD/OMS task makes it clear what is to be built in context of a TD/OMS-defined application,” the company says. “Thus compilation (or recompilation), resource transformation, and component distribution adheres to the rules and definitions per specification of the application to be built.”

RTC comes into play to provide communication and collaboration. “The integration between TD/OMS and IBM RTC allows creating issues and/or stories in RTC, and their assignment to a particular person who can manage the task-related source code within TD/OMS,” the company says. “There is no need to switch between tools to find the right component the user would like to work on, because all this code will remain within TD/OMS.”

Remain says this approach provides the best of both worlds. “Users can benefit from the strength of the IBM i way of working, in combination with Java and/or RPG best practices and users’ established workflows,” the company says. “The methodologies don’t get in each other’s way; therefore, the best of TD/OMS and RTC can be used. Both systems adjust to users’ environment, methodology, and way of developing software and help to improve management of the development process.”