Before you enable configuration management capabilities
for a project area, you should understand how this affects it and
its links to artifacts in other project areas. After you enable these
capabilities, you cannot disable them.
Read a guidance
article for links to videos, considerations, and other resources
to help you decide if using configuration management tools is right
for your team.
Starting in version 6.0.1, only integrations with the following products support versioned
artifacts: IBM Rational® DOORS® Next
Generation, IBM Rational Quality Manager, IBM Rational Rhapsody® Design
Manager, and
IBM Rational Team Concert.
External integrations to Rational Team Concert work items
continue to work as expected, because work items are not versioned.
After you understand the behaviors and limitations that are associated
with enabling configuration management, and you have an activation
key, you can activate
configuration management for the Requirements Management (RM)
or Quality Management (QM) applications. Then, you can enable the configuration
management capabilities in RM and QM project areas. There
is no way to reverse the action after you enable a project area. Back
up existing repositories before you enable configuration management
capabilities. If you restore from a backup, you will lose any changes
that were made in all project areas managed by that server.
See the following sections for application or product-specific
considerations.
All CLM applications
- If you need to keep some applications at a version earlier than 6.0, defer enabling
configuration management until they all can be upgraded:
Rational Team Concert
and Rational Rhapsody Design Manager do not require an activation key to support configuration-enabled projects, but they must be at
version 6.0 or later. If you use version 6.0.1, ideally all the CLM projects should use this
version. If you use these products stand-alone (without linking to other applications), the
information on this page does not apply. If you plan to use either product in global configurations
with other products, the considerations in this topic do apply.
- For linked RM or QM project areas, if you cannot enable configuration management for all of
them, do not enable any of them: Projects that are enabled for configurations cannot be
associated with those that are not. For example, if your RM project links to a QM project, or even
to another RM project, you cannot enable one and not the other. Links between the projects become
uneditable, and links to any artifacts in the enabled project will only resolve to the default
configuration. This behavior does not apply if you link from RM or QM projects to either Rational Team Concert or
Rational Rhapsody Design Manager,
which do not require any enablement to support configuration management. You must make the decision
holistically for related project areas. Project areas that are not associated are not affected, and
do not have to be enabled.
Ensure that you have considered all project relationships, because
there could be cascading links (for example, RM Project A links to RM Project B, which links to QM
Project C).
- Back links are removed and links across project areas are managed
by the Link Index Provider. In projects that are not enabled for
configurations, links across project areas are managed by each application
storing a copy of the link to the other's artifact, which is sometimes
referred to as back linking. When you enable configuration
management, only one application stores a link to the other's artifact,
and that link goes only in one direction. Links are managed by the
Link Index Provider. If RM or QM artifacts have links to artifacts
in other applications, and then you enable configuration management,
to see the links across project areas you must set the current configuration to
a global configuration. For more information, see Links across project areas after enabling configuration management.
- Links to tools outside of CLM are inconsistent until those integrations
are updated to be compatible with configuration-enabled projects.
This includes IBM tools, tools
from other vendors, and custom OSLC integrations, such as those created
by using the SDK from the Eclipse Lyo project.
RM (Rational DOORS Next Generation)
The
following considerations apply to configuration-enabled projects:
- You can migrate baselines from earlier versions of Rational DOORS Next Generation. Starting
in version 6.0, if you start your project without configuration management enabled but enable it
later, you can use the baselines that you created.
- Projects stop their data feeds to the data warehouse, and their data is
archived there. All configuration-specific data is stored in the
lifecycle index and is accessed by using the Lifecycle
Query Engine (LQE)
application. See the Reporting
section for details.
- You can create, display, and delete these link types from Rational Rhapsody Design Manager project
areas: Derives Architecture Element, Refined by Architecture Element, Traced by Architecture
Element, and Satisfied by Architecture Element.
- There are two ways to use change sets:
- Simple scenario, using automatic change sets:
Rational DOORS Next Generation
provides automatic change sets that are created by the system when a change to an artifact or link
is saved. You do not have to manually create and name a change set before making changes. You can
make changes to links across applications and to RM artifacts, because when you edit a link, you are
not in a change set. The system creates and delivers the change set in one atomic action. You can
deliver a potentially large set of these changes to another stream, but this is a complex operation
in version 6.0 releases.
- Complex reuse scenario, using named change sets: You can create explicit, named change
sets to more easily group related changes and deliver changes across streams. For some
organizations, this practice is required as part of the development process. If your organization is
using global configurations, when you create a change set, it is automatically added to your
personal stream. You can then edit links to artifacts in other RM, QM, or Rational Rhapsody Design Manager
repositories.
Conflicting change sets will need to be resolved with manual edits. This includes
any two change sets that change a module structure (add, remove, or reorder the artifacts in a
module). The following actions minimize conflicts:
- Use many small change sets and deliver them quickly.
- Make changes in a separate stream, then deliver all changes at once to the original stream.
- Assign one person to make edits to each module.
For more information about change sets, see Managing changes to artifacts.
- Suspect link traceability is replaced with link validity status on links between artifacts. To
see this information, enable the option to show
link validity status. To understand how link validity helps to achieve consistency across
artifacts and links as artifacts change, see this
topic.
- If you click a link stored elsewhere (for example, on a wiki page),
this link does not specify the configuration context. Rational DOORS Next Generation shows
the artifact at the other end of the link in the default configuration.
If the default configuration does not include that artifact, an error
is shown indicating that the artifact was not found.
- You cannot add CLM links within a rich-text artifact because the
resolution mechanism uses back links, which are not used after you
enable configuration management. If a project already has such links
when configuration is enabled, they won't work. To remove the links,
use the Links side bar of the artifact or the "remove link" option
in the rich text editor.
- CLM lifecycle filters and queries, for example, "show test cases
that have failed", are not supported. Similarly, you cannot filter
QM artifacts by their links to Development Items.
- The Requirements Tracing widget does not show results.
- You cannot create a link to a work item
from a baseline. You can create this link from a stream. To create
a link between a work item and a baseline, create the link from the
Change and Configuration Management (CCM) application. For more
information about link management and link ownership, see Links across project areas after enabling configuration management.
- Links between Rational DOORS version
9 objects and objects in the RM or QM applications do not work as
expected because Rational DOORS does
not support configurations. Instead of linking, use ReqIF to transfer
requirements into specific streams or link to work items, which are
not versioned.
For more information about these behaviors, see the
Rational DOORS Next Generation release
notes on Jazz.net.
In project areas that are
not enabled for configurations, you should understand the following
information about the default configuration:
- It is the stream that the "New project" wizard creates by default,
and it is the only stream in a project.
- If the project was migrated from a previous release, the current
contents of the project are in this stream.
- In this release, it is the only configuration where suspect links
work properly.
- The data warehouse contains information only from the default
configuration.
- The default configuration is used in all cases to resolve an incoming
link that does not contain configuration information, such as links
from a QM project area that is not configuration-enabled, or Hewlett-Packard
Quality Center Synchronizer.
QM (Rational Quality Manager)
The
following considerations apply to configuration-enabled projects:
- Use TRS v2.0 as a data source to create the linked lifecycle data
index.
- Projects stop their data feeds to the data warehouse, and their data is
archived there. All configuration-specific data is stored in the
lifecycle index and is accessed by using the Lifecycle
Query Engine (LQE)
application. See the Reporting
section for details.
- Fewer dashboard widgets are supported, and Rational Quality Manager dashboard
gadgets based on BIRT are not available. To work around this problem, you can create custom widgets
with Report
Builder or create
custom HTML widgets with links to RELM views. Update settings of your dashboard widgets that need to
refer to specific configurations.
- Filtering on development item and development plan links is not
supported.
- The snapshot capability is disabled. You can read previous snapshots but you cannot add them to
global configurations or create new snapshots. Use baselines instead.
- If your QM project requires Rational Quality Manager mobile
application for offline test execution, do not enable configuration management for that project
area.
- You cannot create a link to a work item
from a baseline. You can create this link from a stream. To create
a link between a work item and a baseline, create the link from the
Change and Configuration Management (CCM) application.
DM (Rational Rhapsody Design Manager)
- Change sets that are created in the DM rich client are not automatically added to personal
streams. You must add them manually in the GCM application.
CCM (Rational Team Concert)
- To navigate links to versioned artifacts, you must use the web
client, the Rational Team Concert™ client
for Microsoft Visual Studio
IDE, or the 6.0 (or greater) version of the Rational Team Concert client
for Eclipse IDE.
- To create links to versioned artifacts, you must use the web client,
the 6.0 (or greater) version of the Rational Team Concert client
for Eclipse IDE, or the 6.0 (or greater) version of the Rational Team Concert client
for Microsoft Visual Studio
IDE.
- In general, linking Rational Team Concert plans
to versioned artifacts is not supported. It is possible to create
a link from a versioned artifact to a plan; however, when you navigate
the link from within the plan, Rational Team Concert uses
the default configuration for the target project area. The default
configuration might not be the same configuration from which the link
to the plan was created.
- In a work item that has links to versioned artifacts, if you change
the value of the release (deliverable attribute type) field, the links
are not updated until you save the work item.
- Links to versioned artifacts are not supported in the following
views:
- History tab of the work item editor
- My Activities / My Subscriptions tab in the Quick Planner
- Dashboard viewlets that show change events
- Feeds (Rational Team Concert client
for Eclipse IDE and Rational Team Concert client
for Microsoft Visual Studio
IDE)
- Links tab of a plan
- You can link work items to versioned artifacts only if the configurations
that contain those versioned artifacts belong to global configurations.
- To specify the mapping of OSLC link types to attributes, and to
associate releases with global configurations, you must use the web
client.
- While working in Rational Quality Manager or Rational DOORS Next Generation,
you cannot create a link from a baseline to a work item. The workaround
is to create the link from within the work item.
- In the Rational Team Concert client
for Eclipse IDE, you can perform a bulk edit of work items to change
the target link of versioned artifacts. If the selected work items
belong to different releases and have different associated global
configurations, Rational Team Concert uses
the target artifact versions that belong to the global configuration
associated with the first work item in the selected collection.
- In the web client plan editor, you can perform a bulk edit of
work items to change the target link of versioned artifacts. If the
selected work items belong to different releases and have different
associated global configurations, Rational Team Concert uses
the target artifact versions that belong to the global configuration
associated with the work item from which the context menu was activated.
- The Rational solution for CLM includes
a set of predefined lifecycle work item queries, which retrieve work
items based on their links to artifacts in other applications, such
as Requirements Management (RM) and Quality Management (QM). See Using lifecycle queries for the complete list
of these queries. For work items that are linked to versioned RM and
QM artifacts that do not belong to default configurations, the lifecycle
query results might not be accurate.
- Data warehouse reporting is not supported for links to versioned
artifacts.
For more information about
configuring your project so that you can link work items to specific
versions of artifacts in other applications such as QM and RM, see Enabling linking of work items to versioned
artifacts.
Global Configuration Management (GCM) application
In the
following points, a
GC provider is the GCM application
that your deployment uses.
Reporting
Consider these limitations when reporting on data in configurations. For details and other
considerations, see
Reporting considerations when enabling configuration management.- Enabling configuration management in RM and QM project areas stops their feeds to the CLM data
warehouse and archives their data there. Rational Team Concert does populate the data warehouse, but that data does not include configuration-related
information.
- All configuration-specific data is stored in the
lifecycle index and is accessed by using the Lifecycle
Query Engine (LQE)
application. The Jazz Reporting Service
Report
Builder
and IBM Rational Engineering Lifecycle Manager can
report from the lifecycle index by using an LQE with Configurations data source.
- Link types and attributes for Rational DOORS Next Generation are
duplicated. In the Traceability links section, hover over the question mark
to identify the project the attribute is from. You must set a condition for each attribute
with the same name; then, group them and add an OR relationship between them. To show them in one
column when you run the report, in the Format section, give them the same
column name.
- For configuration-enabled projects, reporting on metrics or historical trends is not supported
at this time.
- If two artifacts are connected by using any of the link types that are listed here, you can
create a traceability report (starting with either artifact A or artifact B) with correct results.
However, if A and B are connected by any other type of Rational DOORS Next Generation link, you
can report only in the forward direction. These link types work:
- http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/rdm/types/ArtifactTermReferenceLink
- http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/rdm/types/Decomposition
- http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/rdm/types/Embedding
- http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/rdm/types/Extraction
- http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/rdm/types/Link
- http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/rdm/types/SynonymLink
- http://purl.org/dc/terms/references
- oslc_rm:affectedBy
- oslc_rm:implementedBy
- oslc_rm:trackedBy
- oslc_rm:validatedBy
- oslc_rm:elaborates
- oslc_rm:elaboratedBy
- oslc_rm:specifies
- oslc_rm:specifiedBy
Note: oslc_rm is from the http://open-services.net/ns/rm#
namespace.
There is no workaround. To get the results of all the relationships and artifacts that are
attached by the relationship, you must build two traceability reports: for example, in one report,
the traceability links start with artifact A; in the other report, they start with artifact B. Then,
run both reports, and manually compare the results.
To learn more about link ownership, see
the "Linking after enabling configurations" section in Links across project areas after enabling configuration management.