Leverage the integrated SCM for WebSphere Studio and Eclipse to increase developer productivity

Brief introduction

Software configuration Management (SCM) establishes and maintains the integrity of software products during the development lifecycle. By protecting and managing business-critical software and assets, SCM enables the development community to produce higher-quality software at a faster, lower cost and risk.

In this article, you will find out why software configuration management is critical to business success. This article discusses IBM rational®clearcase® change management offerings, including the rational ClearCase and rational clearquest® change management solutions, how to get from IBM Websphere®studio and ECLI Provides advanced SCM functionality in the PSE environment. It explains how these features improve productivity, improve quality, and deliver maximum business value. This article also provides best practices for using rational ClearCase and rational ClearQuest from the IBM Websphere®studio and Eclipse environments for more efficient development.

Why is software configuration management?

Software development is an increasingly complex and dynamic activity. Development usually occurs in a team that has concurrent development of the same application and is often geographically dispersed. Multiple versions of the application need to be supported, and they usually have to be run on different machines and operating systems. Increasing economic pressures, the importance of auditing and regulation, and the complexity of development processes and technologies further reinforce the current challenges of software development.

As a result, there are many problems in the process of software development. These issues include:

Corrected bugs are back up.

Previous versions of the software were not found or could not be rebuilt.

The file mysteriously changes or disappears together.

The work of one developer is replaced (disappeared) by the work of another developer.

The previous work suddenly collapsed.

Time pressure, effective project/process management and software quality are the current development challenges. In addition, release cycles and versioning (including the ability to better support multiple versions, decentralized communities, and multiple client configurations), the need for tools running in all environments, and the need to integrate tools with existing development environments have become key web-based application development needs.

How to reduce or even eliminate these problems and the needs that developers face. The answer is SCM. SCM provides tangible business value by helping to simplify and manage software development processes. By providing functionality such as versioning, build management, defect and change tracking, versioning, and process Control, SCM can help:

Increase productivity through concurrent development and automated processes.

Improved operational efficiency through teamwork, support for large distributed teams, increased reliability, and minimization of machine time.

Reduce costs by leveraging existing investments and enhancing reuse of software.

Through the flow of development to accelerate the pace of market launch, and reduce the release/build cycle time.

Improves software quality by preventing users from making mistakes and fewer bugs appearing in their code.

By improving customer response, the customer is better retained.

Leverage a well-structured, repeatable, and auditable process to improve the ability to meet consistent requirements.

Although SCM can bring so many business benefits to an organization, not all SCM tools are born equal. The key is to implement SCM tools that simplify and control change, increase productivity, integrate and manage all software assets, support the entire physical development team, easily integrate existing systems and integrated development environments (IDES), quickly adapt to customer and business requirements, and quickly deliver business results.

"When we introduced WebSphere Studio to our development team, they were very excited because now they were able to integrate Rational ClearCase and have a seamless login and logout process." It's really better than our previous process. In the past, some of our artifacts were not in a change control environment and made a lot of mistakes. Everything goes much smoother by putting everything into Rational ClearCase and using WebSphere Studio in that development environment.

--the Revere Group