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Whats new in Rhapsody Model Manager 6.0.6.1 and Rhapsody 8.4

Introduction

The rising complexity of the products and systems being developed globally is driving engineering teams to seek effective model-based engineering practices, including model-based systems engineering (MBSE). Rising compliance demands such as ISO-26262/ASPICE in automotive and DO-178 C and ARP 4754 for aerospace are driving the need for rigorous change management and lifecycle traceability while at the same time, engineering teams must maintain or improve their quality and engineering productivity. This approach for digital engineering being further endorsed by INCOSE 2025 Vision which places MBSE as an enabling technology for best systems and software engineering practice and the US Department of Defense Digital Engineering Strategy.

To achieve these goals, the engineers who create these models must be full participants in the development lifecycle by partaking in activities that span engineering disciplines, such as:

  • Planning
  • Requirements elaboration and validation
  • Change management
  • Reporting

This focus on engineering is reflected in the renaming of the family of Rhapsody Systems Engineering and Software Development tools from Rational Rhapsody to IBM Engineering Systems Design Rhapsody or ESD Rhapsody for short.

The enhancements in this release of ESD Rhapsody Model Manager (ESD RMM) 6.0.6.1 and ESD Rhapsody 8.4 extends and productizes some of the features of the previous release and allows our users to work efficiently at scale, with large models and large sets of requirements. Building on the work on the previous release.

There is a final section in this blog on Rhapsody Design Manager that users of this tool are advised to read.

Introducing ESD Rhapsody Model Manager V 6.0.6.1

The previous two versions of Rhapsody (V6.0.5 and V6.0.6) gave users the ability to browse/view Rhapsody models on the web, allowed linking to requirements, tests and work items in the other Engineering Lifecycle tools and improved the check-in/out interaction with Engineering Workflow Manager (previously know as Rational Team Concert). This current version of ESD RMM built upon these capabilities and added capabilities to for users to work at scale in the following areas.

Productization of Diagrams on the Web

  • Previously a tech preview in this release, Diagrams on the Web was productized allowing users in production environments to navigate and browse Rhapsody diagrams without the need for the Rhapsody thick client.
  • Ability to navigate between structural and behavioral diagrams without using the Explorer browser.
  • Automatic publishing of diagram images when delivering models changes made in Rhapsody to the RMM server.

Improved Interaction with Remote Artifacts

  • Support for link validity on the web interface
  • Ability to set a default refresh rate for remote requirements, which can reduce the load on the Requirements Management server
  • Detect Modified requirements
  • Stability and quality improvements when managing remote requirements
    • Improvements in how remote requirements are loaded from Engineering Requirements Manager (Formerly known as DOORS Next Generation or DNG)
    • Efficiency improvements in how large collections of requirements are managed

Improved Engineering Lifecycle Optimization – Publishing lifecycle report

  • Support for Publishing to allow reporting for calculated traceability coverage ratios between models and other lifecycle artifacts
    • Works with requirements, test artifacts, and work items

Introducing ESD Rhapsody 8.4 

The major enhancements to Rhapsody in this release were in the areas of reporting, ease of use and working with models at scale, enhanced support for standards and integrations.

Simplified Reporting

The productization of a feature in technical preview from 8.3.1 now allows users to create Hyperlinked HTML report, or any other standard document format report directly from UML and SysML models, the document structure is based upon the browser tree.

Usability

In this release of Rhapsody, a large number of performance improvements were made to make working with large models easier and more efficient. These improvements covered.

  • Faster table refreshes
  • Improved response when opening diagrams
  • Improved responsive times in model browser interactions when working with large models
  • Improved interaction of Browser multi-select compartment options, this has a positive impact on the Drag-Drop, delete pop-up menu options.

Model Management

There were also improvements to the way that users interact with EWM improving the usability off the  EWM direct integration and enhancements to the diff merge capability of Rhapsody, giving it more intelligence.

  • Allowing auto-merge in base-aware scenarios where only a property in one version has changed
  • Reduced number of conflicts that a user has to check, accept and apply

Support for Standards

  • SysML
    • Alignment to SysML slot and instance specification implementation
  • Autosar
    • AUTOSAR authoring support for V4.4(R1810)
    • Enhanced interaction for creating AUTOSAR Datatypes – Improved UI dialog (Create/Edit)
    • Enhanced AUTOSAR model checker
    • Minor – Migration completion from AUTOSAR V431 to V430

Integrations

  • Support VS2015 IDE integration

ESD Rhapsody Design Manager, important news

It’s expected that Rhapsody Design Manager 6.0.6.1 will be the last release of Rhapsody Design Manager. Customers that wish to continue using Rhapsody Design Manager will be able to use 6.0.6.1 with Jazz 7.0 and Rhapsody 8.3.1 (see Optional Programs Section).  Customers are encouraged to start planning to migrate from Rhapsody Design Manager to Rhapsody Model Manager.

If any customers are considering starting new projects they should use Rhapsody Model Manager.

If it is not possible to initiate these projects with Rhapsody Model Manager and they need to use Rhapsody Design Manager then they are recommended to not use the following features;-

  • Actively Managed Mode:- Any projects initiated with Rhapsody Design Manager should use Externally Managed Mode, not Actively Managed Mode
  • Do not instigate Rhapsody Design Manager with TRS/LQE and RELM as the information will be inconsistent with data from Model Manager when this feature is supported in a future release.
  • Do not start using the comment/markup/review process as this information will be lost upon the migration of the project to Model Manager.
  • Do not start importing models from Simulink into Rhapsody Design Manager. Management of Simulink models is not part of the strategic direction of Rhapsody Model Manager and they are other options to support viewing Simulink Models on the web and creating traceability to requirements.