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Orchestrating Development with IBM Rational Team Concert for i

Your software-development team can work in concert and create a symphony for your business

In late November, the IBM Rational development team recently introduced a new collaborative software delivery environment for IBM i based on the Jazz platform (www.ibm.com/software/rational/jazz). IBM Rational Team Concert for i is designed to help development teams simplify, automate and govern native and distributed application development on IBM i.

Team Concert for i is based on the open and extensible Jazz platform, which was intended to complement the open-source extensible Eclipse platform. While Eclipse technology enables the integration of software development tools in a single integrated development environment, Jazz technology fosters the integration of team tools. The Eclipse focus is on the individual developer’s productivity; the Jazz focus is on the team’s productivity. Currently, software development teams use a diverse set of tools—for managing source code, reporting problems, executing builds, tracking test results, planning releases, communicating with team members and so on. The Jazz platform can be used to integrate these capabilities.

Team Concert for i provides the following capabilities:

• An integrated set of collaborative software delivery tools for IBM i development including source control, change management, build/compile execution, process management and governance
• Specialized support for source control, change management and compilation of traditional language artifacts such as RPG and COBOL
• Integration with the ubiquitous IBM Rational Developer for i to enable team capabilities for native IBM i applications
• Support for multi-tier software development and application modernization efforts using RPG, Java and Enterprise Generation Language
• Support for IBM i native library file system for traditional development and compiling of RPG and COBOL artifacts, and the IFS for building Java applications
• A build system toolkit that runs natively on IBM i and can be used to run IBM i commands and call programs
• Native hosting of the Jazz Team Server on IBM i, which uses a single library as a repository to store all information

Team Concert for i provides these capabilities by extending the IBM Rational Team Concert product, which is available for Windows and Linux platforms. Team Concert for i includes the Jazz Team Server and Build System Toolkit, which run on IBM i. The Team Concert for i client is shipped as an installable component of IBM Rational Developer for i. To use Team Concert for i for team collaboration and managing RPG and COBOL applications, you must have Rational Developer for i installed.

Now let’s take a closer look at some of the integrated components in Team Concert for i.

Software Configuration Management

Team Concert for i delivers essential software version control, workspace management and parallel development support to individuals and teams. Specific functions include:

• The capability to store, control and track changes to RPG, COBOL, CL, DDS and Java application source in a repository
• The capability to import source members from libraries and Java source from IFS into your Rational Developer for i environment, and share them in a Team Concert for i server for version control
• A mapping feature that enables projects defined in Rational Developer for i and shared in Team Concert for i to be mapped to libraries on IBM i
• A Continuous Load function that shadows the contents of projects in the Software Configuration Manager (SCM) to the mapped libraries on IBM i so that any changes are continuously reflected. This lets RPG include files to be found during editing and dependent artifacts to be found using library lists during compiling
• A server-based sandbox mechanism known as a repository workspace that enables you to share your changes in the SCM but keep them private to you. You can share your changes with the team only when you’re ready, and yet have a way to back up work from your local workstation

Change Management (Work Items Management)

Team Concert for i supports different types of work items for software development teams, including tasks, defects and enhancements. Tasks capture activities that team members must perform, defects identify problems with the software, and so on. Team members can discuss particular work items and save their comments. Work-item owners and interested parties who’ve subscribed to those work items receive notifications via e-mail or Web feeds. Team members can create queries to help them prepare status reports, for example, and share them with the team or with particular users. Work-item management functions include:

• Predefined defect, enhancement, and task work-item types for tracking changes to RPG, COBOL, CL, DDS and Java source
• The capability to create your own work-item types with customized workflows
• The capability to create queries, view results and share the queries with your team or particular members
• Support for approvals and discussions of work items so team processes are followed and history of comments are kept in the repository
• Query editor interface to let you create and change queries by selecting and entering information for different work-item parameters such as owner, category, type, status and so on

Build/Compile Management

Team Concert for i enables efficient scheduling and execution of software build and compile processes. You can use multiple servers for rapid, cross-platform build processing and create a detailed bill of materials to enhance build reproducibility. Additional functions include:

• Support for building RPG and COBOL applications on IBM i. You can run a single command for all the artifacts in your projects, or for every change you make to a project (e.g., changing source code in members, adding new members, etc.)
• Capability to specify pre- and post-build commands
• Detailed log itemizing the results of each build
• Support for Java builds using Ant and CL tools using QShell and IFS
• Work item and change set traceability
• Build definitions for team builds

Process Management, Collaboration and Project Health

Team Concert for i helps you define and enforce processes that your team needs.

Process automation and guidance: An enforcement of agreed-upon standards can help ensure higher-quality results. Rules are customizable and can be defined or refined as needed, enabling continuous improvement. Team Concert for i provides an IBM i Scrum template that will help you move to an iterative, incremental process of software development commonly used with a popular development methodology called agile. This template is geared toward IBM i users who want to start agile development. It configures the SCM with a set of promotion levels, and also defines the user roles required for Scrum development. You can read more about Scrum on the Wikipedia definition Web page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCRUM).

Contextual collaboration: Through personal customizable views, team members can gain a better understanding of what’s happening on their native and distributed software-development projects (news and events, build completion notifications, what’s being worked on and changes being made). Team members can also find out what teammates are working on, who’s online and who’s available to collaborate with using instant messaging.

Web client: Through Web 2.0 technology, users experience a “rich-client” style of interaction through Web access. External stakeholders or occasional users can gain access to information through the Web without installing the Eclipse-based Rational Developer for i product that contains the Team Concert for i rich client.

Dashboards and reporting: Project, individual and team dashboards offer reliable project health information obtained directly from ongoing work.

Music to Your Ears

All this functionality should be music to your ears. If you’re looking for an integrated collaboration environment that handles source control, change management, compile/build execution and governance of your native and distributed software development cycle, IBM Rational Team Concert for i could be your perfect solution.