Synchronizing a data repository using the Rational team concert Item Connector

Connect data repositories in different departments to make collaboration easier

The synchronization of data between different departmental systems is very important. For example, customer support and development departments often have their own problem-tracking systems, so data synchronization enables employees across different departments to share information and handle the same problems at the same time. However, this is very difficult to implement because it requires manual action. One way that employees in different departments collaborate to handle the same problem is by contacting the repository between two teams so that people can share and track objects in the repository. You can do this by using the Project Connector (item Connector), where the project connector is an extensible framework in ibm®rational team concert™ that stores objects in the external repository and permanent in the Ibm®jazz™ technology repository objects are connected. This article explains how to design and create a new connector, and I've provided some examples for learning.

How the Project connector works

How do you respond when you get access from a user? It all depends on the user. If it is an external user, then support people to receive a visit and then create a voucher to record the visit. This is called an access tracking system. The user may be an internal user, and it is not receiving a warning from the running system. In this case, the internal support staff is accessed and the problem is tracked by the problem tracking system. These are examples of tracking systems.

The most recent tracking system relies heavily on software, so the reported problems will eventually be brought to the software development project. But how do you relate these issues to development activities? This is a major pitfall. In many cases, these problems can be solved manually. For example, information can be emailed to a software product, or discussed by phone. Important information is easily lost. Because there is no connection between development and front-end problem tracking systems, time is wasted on processing errors (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Information is usually untraceable.

The Ibm®rational Team Concert™ provides a collaborative development environment to handle these situations. It is an open platform for scalable design. Various connectors are already available on the jazz.net. However, your company may use one of its own systems, which is not associated with any software development system. There is no barrier to using Rational Team concert software to process a repository. Item Connector is the best way to handle this code.

Item Connector is an extensible framework within the Rational team concert that uses an external repository and a jazz item in the Jazz repository ("project" is a term in item Connector to represent a jazz repository based on Permanent object) is linked. The connection is achieved by first copying the external object into the Jazz repository, and then synchronizing the external object with the state of the Jazz project. This is called the synchronization process. A company can use it to automatically associate information in a system, such as a problem tracking system, with software development activities. Systems are interconnected and provide traceability (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Use Item Connector to track information