The Rational Team Concert for Power team is proud to announce that Rational Team Concert for Power Systems Software release 2.0 is now available for download.  Rational Team Concert for Power 2.0 is the new version of Rational Team Concert for i 1.0, expanding support for team collaboration from the IBM i operating system to the broader Power Systems platform.

Rational Team Concert for Power 2.0 is based on Rational Team Concert 2.0.0.1. Thus, it includes the new features introduced in Rational Team Concert 2.0.0.1 and Rational Team Concert 2.0. The rest of this blog post highlights the new features specific to Rational Team Concert for Power. For more detail, check the Rational Team Concert for Power 2.0 New & Noteworthy.

Source Control:

In many IBM i development shops today, source versioning and control is very primitive: source file members basically just get pushed around from one library to another, with no history of changes, and no recoverability of  previous versions of source. Rational Team Concert for Power keeps track of every line of source changed, by whom, and why it was changed. It also understands the library-based file system of IBM i.

Builds:

In this release, we spent a lot of effort on improving builds for IBM i. There is a new IBM i build specification which comes with default settings for compiling your RPG, COBOL, DDS, CL, etc. source. Customize this to override compiler options for specific or generic sets of source members, or to add new actions like saving the built objects into a save file archive. Define object or source dependencies to trigger rebuilding of impacted objects.

There is also a new build definition to customize builds at various promotion levels (e.g. development integration, testing, production). Within each build definition, you can specify the source and object libraries, library list search path, pre-build and post-build operations, and other build properties, to handle any special characteristics for each type of build. We also improved the build results to organize the errors from the compiler listings and list the objects created by the build.

Auditability:

Have you ever been suspicious that someone has tampered with programs, either on your development machine, or in production? The builds in Rational Team Concert for Power now tags the objects built with an identifier that can be mapped to a specific team build run in Rational Team Concert for Power.

Integration with Rational Developer for Power Systems Software:

Individual developers using Rational Developer for Power Systems Software can collaborate as a team, thanks to integration with Rational Team Concert for Power. This enables developers to deliver code produced with Rational Developer for Power to the rest of the team, using Rational Team Concert for Power’s source control features, work item planning and tracking, and team builds – all within a common Integrated Development Environment. Note that managers and other interested stakeholders don’t need an IDE to participate – they can use their web browser to access dashboards, plans, and work items to collaborate and track progress.

In the weeks ahead, the Rational Team Concert for Power team will expand our presence here on jazz.net as a project participating in transparent development. Speaking on behalf of the Rational Team Concert for Power team, we all look forward to opening this dialog with you to continue the evolution of Rational Team Concert for Power!