IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation (DNG) 6.0.2 continues with the overall theme of the 6.0 series while introducing some exciting new capabilities to help your organization bring control to your requirements.

Areas of improvement in 6.0.2 include:

• Workflow for requirements
• End-user productivity
• Configuration management
• Bulk data import/export
• Administration, non-functional scalability and security
• Next phase in adopting new technology for diagram editing

For full details of what’s new in 6.0.2, check out the New & Noteworthy in the Downloads section. See the Release Notes for a list of fixes. To see what’s supported, see the System Requirements.

Workflow for requirements

It’s very rare for an organization to start a program or project from a clean sheet as there is nearly always existing terminology and process. Introducing requirements into an organization is far simpler if that can be done using a company’s existing language and practices.

DNG now introduces workflow for requirements artifacts, enacting an organization’s existing process within the tool. Workflow enables requirements to have a lifecycle from inception to review, deployment, and final closure or end of life. Process enactment includes support for definable lifecycle states, access controls over which user role can move requirements from one state to another, and access controls within a state to describe which aspects of requirements data can be modified at each stage of its process.

Each time you define a new information type (e.g. “User Requirement”), you will be allowed to associate the type with a defined workflow – in the same way as assigning an attribute to a type.  A workflow defines the valid “states” that artifacts are allowed to be in (e.g. Draft, In Review, Approved, Complete etc).

Transition between stages of the workflow is protected by role-based access rights, allowing control to be set governing who is allowed to move requirements from one state to another (e.g. who can Approve a requirement). At each stage of the workflow, it is possible to govern how much of a requirement is allowed to be modified so that, as a requirement moves closer to agreement, more and more of the requirement is tied down and subject to firmer control of changes.

End-user productivity improvements

At the very core of all tools is the editing mechanism to modify information. DNG 6.0.2 has embellished the editing experience to offer a far more productive, consistent, and responsive environment for the end-user.

This release also provides other usability enhancements, including:

• New stationary toolbar and easier-to-use popup attribute editors make editing requirements  more consistent wherever there are
• An enhanced mechanism to support symbols within requirements data
• Due to popular demand, new trace columns extend the concept of “where used” to show where reviews and collections artifacts are included
• A new contextual “back” button has replaced the original “breadcrumb” providing for contextual navigation back to folders or artifacts. The original breadcrumb of where an artifact sits in the project has been moved to the properties tab on the right
• The ability to create inter-project links using custom link types

Configuration management

This release provides a merge delivery wizard to remove the manual barriers to delivering changes between streams if you are not as interested in the comparison process. Simply set up delivery policies and DNG will do the rest. No need to step through a detailed comparison for changes you already know you wish to accept.

For clients wishing to automate delivery of large volumes of change sets an API is now available here.

Bulk data import/export

Working within a tool is always best, but often it’s impossible to avoid the need to take data offline for travel or distribution to extended stakeholders. Following on from the previous release of DNG, this latest release introduces direct, round-trip support for Excel file formats while extending the information supported to include OSLC-based trace information. Make use of Excel import to create links in bulk to other CLM and OSLC-based applications. A good example of this is where combined information is being moved from previous legacy products and needs to be spread over multiple tools such as DNG and RQM.

Also in the area of import/export, export to ReqIF has been extended to include original IDs of requirements so that suppliers can refer to these IDs in conversations. Original IDs are referred to as “ReqIF.ForeignID”. The foreign ID is exported to be used in any third-party RM tool including DOORS and DNG.

Administration, non-functional scalability, and security

DOORS Next Generation has improved support for data scale exponentially release on release, and we are pleased to announce that we continue with this trend. DNG 6.0.2 provides support for at least 5 million requirements artifacts per Unix-based RM server, and we plan similar improvements for Windows servers later this year. We expect to continue this exponential growth into our 2017 releases.*

*All future plans are subject to change. These statements were accurate at the time of writing.

Many industries rely on data classification and have very strict rules governing where data can be stored and what cleaning actions are required, to guard against classified information leaking into a repository designed for unclassified information. This release introduces a new administrative function designed to remove information that has been archived but not physically removed from the system. A new data dump tool has also been provided to offer a mechanism for security offices to audit that data has been scrubbed from the system.

Future deprecation of “RRCx”

We have received excellent feedback for the new Diagram Editors, delivered in version 6.0, allowing support of informal diagramming within requirements sets without the need to install an additional browser.

It’s now the time to consider the future for the older RRCx technology which forced customers to deploy add-ons to browsers.  If your organization has not made use of the original RRCx based editors then you need read no further!

The original RRCx editors have continued to be part of the DNG releases in order provide our customers with consistency and with time to move over to the new technology. The third-party components used within RRCx are now deprecating two of the three major browsers (Firefox and Chrome), and so by the end of 2016, DNG is forced to deprecate its Java plugin-based graphical diagramming tools – RRCx. DNG already supports some of the diagramming types currently supported by RRCx and expects to continue to be extended.

While future functionality is subject to change without notice, the following actions are expected within 2016:

• Diagram Editor to support a full UI wireframe palette and associated functionality
• Diagram Editor to provide parity with most RRCx functionality; this inlcudes link indicators, embedding of artifacts, embedding of diagrams, and layers (layers is intended to support RRCx’s Storyboard artifact format).
• Diagram Editor will not be implementing the RRCx feature to allow an embedded UI Sketch to be modified in the diagram where it is embedded.
• From the end of 2016, RRCx artifact types will be read-only. The diagrams will all look identical, and will all be clickable, printable, and reportable.

A utility will be provided to convert an RRCx diagram into the Diagram Editor format. All of the RRCx format types will be supported. While this conversion will not be pixel perfect, it is expected to preserve every shape, connection, artifact link, and comment in the original RRCx diagram.

New users can try DNG in the cloud using a product sandbox. To download and install DNG, go to product download.

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