We are pleased to announce that the Rational Connector for SAP Solution Manager (version 4.0.0) is now available as a free download on jazz.net. With this solution, businesses can now integrate between the ALM features of SAP Solution Manager and the Rational solution for Collaborative Lifecycle Management. Utilizing industry standards, such as Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration, end-users can seamlessly optimize the deployment of their SAP and Rational projects. Support is offered for:

• Rational Quality Manager (3.0.1.2+, 4.0+)
• Rational Requirements Composer (3.0.1.2+, 4.0+)
• Rational Team Concert (3.0.1.2+, 4.0+)
• Rational RequisitePro (7.1.1+)
• Rational ClearQuest (7.1.1+, 8.0)

SAP Solution Manager 7.1 Support Package Stack 2 is required for the integration. To support the SAP Business Process Change Analyzer (BPCA) functionality, the integration requires SAP Solution Manager 7.1 Support Package Stack 5.

The IBM Rational Connector for SAP Solution Manager is a web application providing a communication layer between Rational tools and SAP’s Solution Manager product. It employs protocols jointly developed by IBM and SAP. Once an administrator has linked one or more Solution Manager and Rational tools projects, end users can begin by exporting SAP Solution Manager blueprints to create IBM Rational Quality Manager test plans and test cases as well as IBM Rational Requirements Composer requirements. Resulting requirements and test collections reside in a folder structure that mirrors the blueprint hierarchy found in SAP. Requirements link back to the blueprint requirements documents, providing a live view of the details of the blueprint business requirements. After testing is performed, results can be imported back into SAP Solution Manager for reporting and analysis.

As SAP packaged applications are deployed, problems which span the paired SAP and Rational development tools may need to be made visible in multiple environments. Using OSLC, the IBM Rational Connector for SAP Solution Manager allows users to create links between IBM Rational Team Concert work items and SAP Service Desk incidents. Problems may initially be created as an incident in SAP Service Desk or a work item in IBM Rational Team Concert with a corresponding work item or incident opened in the other tool and linked. Within IBM Rational Team Concert, an OSLC link to an incident will provide a preview of the Service Desk incident when hovered over with the mouse. Clicking on that link will take the user to the browser interface of Service Desk for the associated incident.

Also new in this release is support for SAP’s Business Process Change Analyzer (BPCA). Using BPCA, end users can determine which areas of a blueprint are affected by changes (such as customizations to a packaged application or the installation of a service pack). With the IBM Rational Connector for SAP Solution Manager, users can generate an IBM Rational Quality Manager test plan with an ordered set of test cases focused on the impacted areas of the change(s). Test plans can be optimized based on a number of criteria. This BPCA integration with the IBM Rational Connector for SAP Solution Manager and IBM Rational Quality Manager is the first of a kind integration for test management tools exterior to SAP Solution Manager.

More details, including a downloadable file and a link to detailed documentation can be found at https://jazz.net/downloads/sap-connector/releases/4.0.0. With this solution, you should now have the ability to manage and test your SAP and non-SAP projects in a unified way. Give it a try, and let us know what you think!

Brian L. King
Development Manager
Rational Adapter Development