Integrate the software development process with IBM Rational Tools

There is no lack of methods for software development, and the same is true for tools. However, there is almost nothing to use in the connection process and tools. However, when using your development tools, you cannot guarantee the cooperation or communication between one party and the other. With IBM rational process advisor, software development practitioners will have a powerful mechanism to integrate the two. This article Article Describes process advisor and practical skills that can be used in tools and process development environments. The evolution of the acquisition development process was not long ago. If you want to obtain the software development process, the process is basically described in a large amount of text information. These process types are difficult to maintain, configure, and follow. In many cases, process description is not suitable for software development practitioners or is completely inappropriate. A good example of evolution to the basic process knowledge stage is the IBM Rational Unified Process (RUP ). RUP has evolved from a simple basic knowledge to a process component-based architecture with configurable and deployed plug-ins. Program . The initial attempt to connect RUP with software development tools was implemented in the form of extended help, the parts of the RUP are connected to tools such as IBM Rational requisitepro, IBM Rational testmanager, IBM Rational robot, and IBM Rational ClearQuest. Practitioners can now associate the specific context of software development tools with specific content in the RUP Process Guide, this feature of IBM rational process advisor will further advance the concept of the development process. Context-sensitive associations between tools and processes transform a pure connection into a tight integration, which helps overcome some of the challenges that software developers often face: process tool breaking (unrelated): define and use the process without any reference for using the development tool. There is no proper method to access the process: access and use of the process is not suitable for developers and is not part of the developer or testing environment. Difficult to configure the process: developers cannot use the process section in the context of their development tool environment, for example, making the process suitable for the roles that developers assume when using the tool set, because the process is role-centered. There is a lack of feasible interfaces between processes and tools: the process does not provide content specific to the context of the developer's development environment, and developers are not allowed to search or browse from the tool to the process. Unable to adjust the process Scale Based on tools: developers or testers are not allowed to adjust the Process Section for the specific tool environment (to make the process suitable for the tools used in the project ), because the process is tool-centric. To see how process advisor can benefit practitioners by overcoming these difficulties, let's first review the details of process advisor components and mechanisms. Description of IBM rational process advisor to understand process advisor and its unique value to practitioners, we will describe what process advisor was about. First, we will discuss what elements are, then discuss rational platform integration, and finally describe some process advisor techniques, such as how it works with the development tool environment. Process advisor is actually an integration of four elements: Process advisor itself IBM rational process browser process content process parameter selection page. By grouping these four parts together, you can? Rational? Obtain and search process guidance, browse, and manage Process views in software V7 delivery platform (1), and manage process parameter selection. Figure 1. use case diagram of process advisor when you work in the IBM Rational Software delivery platform V7, process advisor provides real-time, context-related process guidance. For example, when you start at IBM? Rational? When you create a test in performance tester, process advisor displays process guidance related to that context, as shown in figure 2. Figure 2. The process advisor view in the IBM Rational performance tester tool then you can further browse the process configurations in the Rational Software delivery platform V7 by selecting specific instructions in the process advisor view. As shown in 3, the process browser view displays process guidance and all relevant process elements. Figure 3. Another important element in the process browser view is process search, which enables you to configure specific guidance for the search process in the Rational Software delivery platform V7. (See Figure 4 .) Figure 4. Process search screenshot process parameter selection page (figure 5) allows you to customize and create a filter for the Process Guide displayed by process advisor. Figure 5. on the process parameter selection page, the integration of process advisor and rational products can now use process advisor in the software build and Processing Section of the V7 toolset of the Rational Software delivery platform: software development tools IBM Rational Software Architect IBM Rational application developer IBM Rational Software modeler IBM Rational Systems Developer Software testing tools IBM Rational performance tester IBM Rational functional tester IBM Rational manual tester IBM Rational funtional tester extension process advisor Technology It is based on Eclipse and can run on any operating system that supports eclipse 3.2.1: Microsoft Windows XP and 2003 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ws, the mechanism of desktop 3.0 and 4.0 SuSE Linux desktop and Enterprise Server 9.0 and 10.0.process advisor is that process advisor runs in a specific tool environment. All tools in the Rational Software delivery platform V7 can get process guidance from the process advisor view. For example, in rational performance tester, if a tester selects a project in the project browser, the context in process advisor is activated and the process elements are displayed in the process advisor view shown in figure 6. Figure 6. the value of the process advisor view associated with the test browser in rational peformance tester enables your development team to work in a common development process, these processes are configured for the environment of specific practitioners. Therefore, process advisor provides unique value to the development team by focusing on the practitioner level. This is evident in three areas: Process Creation, process access, and process guidance. Process advisor has default process configurations that are used by some tools in the IBM Rational Software delivery platform V7. In addition to these default configurations, you can use custom process configurations by using IBM? Rational? Method composer is created and released, and then points these configurations to process advisor. (These are implemented on the process parameter selection page, as shown in Figure 5 above ). Therefore, you can publish a Process configuration in rational method composer and use the parameter selection page (WINDOW> parameter selection...> Process) Point Process advisor to the published process description. Process advisor then uses the process you selected from the process filter settings on the process parameter selection page. The process parameter selection page can be obtained from the IBM Rational Software delivery platform V7 (> WINDOW> parameter selection menu ). A basic part of process advisor is the ability to filter process configurations that point to it. As a practitioner, you can select only the roles you are interested in. You can also create filters for theme types related to process configurations (such as tasks, work products, guides, tool guides, check lists, samples, and so on. Therefore, process advisor enhances the Software creation process capabilities of rational method composer by creating contextual integration between your tools and process configurations. Process access advisor provides a unique access method and deployment mechanism for tools and process help and consistency. Because process advisor is a view that runs from an eclipse shell given by the IBM Rational Software delivery platform V7, you can directly access process guidance from the tool environment. After you select a context in the tool, if process advisor is activated, you will see the context-related process elements in the process advisor view. You can only click a specific process element in process advisor to start the process browser (see figure 7) to go deep into the process. Figure 7. the process browser displays the detailed information of the process elements selected in process advisor in the prominent position in Figure 7. You can see that when practitioners select the Performance Scheduling context in rational performance tester, process advisor is activated. In the process advisor view, select a tool guide that represents a specific process element of "Create a performance test using IBM Rational performance tester" to activate the process browser, this then presents detailed process content for the specific process element. In the process browser, you can find more process details. This tool interface allows you to directly access context-related process content from the tool environment. The process advisor guide can take many forms, depending on the configuration selection on the process parameter selection page. Process advisor provides various process guides for connecting to eclipse desktop tools. You can use process elements, such as guidelines, tool guides, samples, and checklists. You can also use the process filter page to display these process elements in a specific order. For example, in the previous rational performance tester example (figure 7), there is a specific tool guide. You can use the process filter page settings to display guidance elements, such as Tool guidance. You can select a specific context, such as the performance test schedule editor, this provides a specific context guide for the unique section of rational performance tester. Practitioners benefit from each part of the process: creation, access, and guidance. In addition, process advisor enables practitioners to integrate tools into processes, which is more relevant to specific context associations in tools and is easy to access. Process advisor and process browser enhancements have introduced some major changes to the process starting with IBM Rational Software delivery platform V7, the collaborative usage model includes integrating Process configuration and process usage into a single process information view. This provides you: provides process guidance for the release of rational method composer configuration to better filter the process. content providers can specify a specific process configuration as the source of the Process Guide and share the public configuration capability for the process advisor configuration. multiple support (including providing a user-friendly interface for creating new tools and process associations, and a simple method for creating and maintaining the initial association) the browser also enhances the process in three forms: supports the configuration released by rational method composer. Supports the configuration packaged in the Eclipse plug-in program. You do not need to select another configuration on the process parameter selection page. Note: The process parameter selection page has been enhanced, added more embedded Process configuration filtering options and dynamic discovery.