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 and defense are driving the need for rigorous change management and lifecycle traceability. At the same time, engineering teams must maintain or improve their quality and engineering productivity. This approach for digital engineering is further endorsed by INCOSE’s 2025 Vision along with the US Department of Defense’s Digital Engineering Strategy which places MBSE as an enabling technology for the best systems and software engineering practice.

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

The enhancements in this release of Engineering Systems Design Rhapsody Model Manager (ESD RMM) 7.0 and ESD Rhapsody 9.0 extends and productizes some of the features of the previous release and allows practitioners to work efficiently at scale, with large models and large sets of requirements.

For those of you using Rhapsody Design Manager, make sure you see my comments at the end of this post.

Introducing ESD Rhapsody Model Manager V 7.0.0

The previous three versions of Rhapsody Model Manager (V6.0.5, V6.0.6 and V 6.0.6.1) have rapidly accelerated the functionality of Model Manager. RMM V6.0.5 offered basic linking to requirements and the ability to see the model browser on the web. In RMM V6.0.6.1, practitioners can link model elements across work items, tests, and requirements, partake in Global Configurations, enjoy improved integration with Engineering Workflow Management (EWM) from the Rhapsody client, and view models on the web. The V7.0 release builds upon these features, enhancing some and adding new functionality to further improve ease of use and efficiency.

Rhapsody Model Manager as an extension to Engineering Workflow Management

Modifying the architecture of Rhapsody Model Manager to be an extension to EWM has been the main development task for this release. The main benefit of this change in architecture is that you can now manage models, code and work items on the same EWM server and in the same components, development streams and snapshots/baselines. This not only reduces the number of servers that need to be managed and maintained, but it also reduces the complexity of having to create and manage project relationships across two different servers.

To help with scalability and performance, RMM now includes support for clustering and database rollback because of its relationship to EWM. We made improvements in how Rhapsody under RMM works in a multi-stream development and we improved the diff-merge process to simplify the workflows of RMM enabled models.

Rhapsody Model Manager 7.0 will be part of a new installation package that also includes EWM in a single application. Currently, check-in of Rhapsody models requires an EWM Developer license. This is a temporary behavior, and we are planning on providing an update with the next release to allow for model check-in in a single server configuration without an EWM Developer license. Teams that wish to manage code and models in a combined model + source code management server will use EWM Developer licenses in addition to the RMM System and Software Engineer licenses. Users of other tools (EWM, ETM, DOORS Next or DOORS) will be able to create traceability links between Rhapsody model elements and requirements without the need for an EWM Developer license.

Display Matrix/Tables, elements properties on web and Reporting

In addition to the enhancements in 6.0.6.1 to productize the web view of Rhapsody models/diagrams, it is now possible to view Tables and Matrix views from Rhapsody in the RMM web client. Stereotypes, tags, dependencies, and plain text descriptions are now not only available on the web as part of a model elements properties view as well as available from the Reportable REST API. ELO Publishing (formerly RPE) Architecture Management reports can also be run directly from RMM using your browser.

Rhapsody RMM table View

Rhapsody Matrix view web

Offline mode

One of the key features we have been asked for since we introduced RMM was the ability to work in an RMM model in offline mode, allowing users to work on RMM enabled Rhapsody projects when they do not have an internet connection. In RMM 7.0, this is now possible. There are two ways to switch to offline working.

• On Open – when the EWM client is running or you are disconnected from a network
• On Save – when the RMM server is not connected

Global Configurations with DOORS 9.7.1

The very first version of RMM has supported Global Configurations the ELM tools. Due to modifications in DOORS 9.7.1, it is now possible to link requirements in a DOORS 9.7.1 module to Rhapsody model elements in the context of a Global Configuration.

Introducing Rhapsody 9.0

Over the past two releases, the Rhapsody development team has been working on porting Rhapsody onto Visual Studio 2017. This has been a large piece of work that has taken a lot of resources and this work is now complete with Rhapsody 9.0. The advantage this gives us is that now and in the future, we can concentrate on upgrading the Rhapsody user experience and modernizing the GUI to use modern Microsoft Windows widgets.

The other major change in the infrastructure of Rhapsody is a modification to how and where it is installed. This new version of Rhapsody splits the installation of executable/application files and workspace files. This is to comply with requests from companies carrying out large deployments who want the installation to comply with security profiles that are used by programs like Microsofts App Locker, which controls where executable files can be launched from.

It is for these two reasons that the Rhapsody version number has changed to  9.0.

Hyperlinked HTML Document Generation –

The Hyperlinked HTML document generation was first introduced in 8.3.1 as a tech preview. It has now reached a state of maturity; and in this release, the document generation is more efficient, and the formatting has been dramatically improved with better fonts, layout, and icons, an improved tree view, and improved table of contents.

Hyperlinked HTML document showing report and navigable links

An easy introduction to modeling with new SysML Perspectives

Although not a major feature as such, many customers have asked us for an easy entry point for someone getting started using Rhapsody for Model-Based Systems Engineering. In a version years ago, we addressed this need with the SysML perspectives, however, in this release, we decided to modify the SysML Perspectives.

Overview of Simplified SysML, “Getting Started” perspective

A new SysML perspective called “Getting Started” provides a very clean, simplified set of menus, feature tabs and an initial package structure. A dedicated welcome screen guides new users through the process of building a simple, but executable Rhapsody model touching the basics that every Rhapsody user should know.

Miscellaneous Rhapsody 9.0 Features

In this release, there have been several feature enhancements that will improve the practitioner’s overall experience of working with Rhapsody.

• EWM Direct Integration: as mentioned above, the Rhapsody direct integration to EWM now supports the “Accept” Operation with enhanced diff-merge capabilities.
• Simulate with Proxy Ports having a multiplicity larger than one. This feature works with Operation calls, Event Receptions, and Value Properties.
• Support for MinGW compiler: simulate models and execute and run code compiled using the MinGW-w64 v 6.3 and 8.1.0 compilers. MinGW compiler can be used with heterogeneous simulations that use Simulink models; in that case, it must match the installed MathWorks MatLab version.
• Further enhancements to Combo boxes for model selection: active search on all elements selected
• Expand-Shrink to fit text: new diagram option to expand or shrink the size of model elements so that it fits the various text fields.
• Increased the number of Plugins/Helpers: Rhapsody can now load up to 500 Plugins and 1000 Helpers (including internally used).

Rhapsody Design Manager

As many of you are aware, Rhapsody Model Manager was developed to replace Rhapsody Design Manager and that day is now close to hand. The last version of Rhapsody Design Manager is  V 6.0.6.1. This final version of Design Manager will work with Rhapsody 8.3.1 and with ELM 7.0.0 (see Optional Programs Section). Customers having entitlement to Design Manager will also have entitlement to Rhapsody Model Manager going forward.

Support for Design Manager will end in June 2021. Customers are encouraged to start planning to migrate from Rhapsody Design Manager to Rhapsody Model Manager. Please contact your account manager and/or technical sales representative to discuss how this process can be managed.

Any teams that are starting new modeling projects should use Rhapsody Model Manager.

If it is not possible to initiate these projects with Rhapsody Model Manager and you need to use Rhapsody Design Manager, then we recommend 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 Engineering Insights (formerly 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.

Graham Bleakley
ELM Offering Management

Updated 17 th April 2020

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