For the Rhapsody Model Manager (RMM) v7.0.3 release, we specifically concentrated our efforts in two categories:

1. Reporting on models and related traceability as part of your versioned Digital Thread.
2. User productivity, including simpler ways to create OSLC links involving artifacts managed by RMM, ability to search for architecture elements, and additional options for copying architecture elements or diagrams. These and some others are described in more detail below.

Reporting

You can use JRS Report Builder and IBM® Engineering Lifecycle Optimization – Engineering Insights to report on Rhapsody® model artifacts and traceability between architecture elements and other artifacts, such as requirements managed by DOORS® Next. The Tracked Resource Set (TRS) feed of RMM provides data to the Lifecycle Query Engine (LQE), and Report Builder and ENI query LQE for this data.

Compared to DOORS Next (DN) or Engineering Test Management, it’s common for a stream or baseline of artifacts managed by Engineering Workflow Management (EWM) SCM and RMM to have an order of magnitude more artifacts. So instead of automatically publishing ‘all’ versions to the TRS feed (as DN and ETM do) we implemented a ‘selective publishing’ approach instead. Project Admins choose the SCM configurations (Example: SCM stream, snapshot, or baseline) that they would like to report on. This helps address some scalability issues by keeping only the “interesting” data in LQE.

The following are some of the report types in JRS Report Builder that can be generated from model data:

• External Relationships
  • Traceability with Requirements
  • Traceability with Test Cases
  • Traceability with Work Items
  • “Link Validity” Based Reports
• Internal Relationships
  • Explicit Internal Relationships (e.g.: dependency, generalization, flow, etc…)
  • Implicit Internal Relationships (internal Rhapsody references such as type, aggregates, applied stereotypes, tags, etc.)

Architecture Element data in the TRS feed expose the same set of properties that are currently visible on the properties page for an architecture element in RMM Web-UI. These properties include name, description, modified date, project area, component, aggregation kind, type, etc. The usual Report Builder functionality can be used with these artifacts such as adding conditions for extra filtering and formatting report results based on attributes.

Reports can be scoped to a selected global configuration, or alternatively against a non-configuration-aware project area (opt-out) by filtering the report to a specific project area.

For example: the following screenshot shows how one would define a report in Report Builder to show architecture elements and their relations. With this setup, one could then apply a filter to narrow the results for example limiting the Relation Type to show only Architecture elements and their ‘Generalization’.

This second example demonstrates a treaceability report, showing all architecture elements of type of ‘Block’ that are linked to a requirement.

For additional information on JRS based reporting for RMM and how to create different report types within JRS Report Builder see: https://jazz.net/wiki/bin/view/Main/RmmJrsReporting.

Ease of use

Simplified linking for OSLC links

You can drag model elements from the Explorer or Properties editor view and drop them on the task editor in EWM, test case editor in ETM, or artifacts editor in DOORS Next to create OSLC links across IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management applications.

Alternatively, you can use the Copy and Paste as Link actions as an alternative and simple way to create OSLC links.

Note that simplified linking is not available when linking from RMM to DOORS Next when there is an SCM Deliver precondition that requires all change sets to be associated with a work item.

Quick search

The ‘Quick Search’ menu, which is present at the top right on all EWM pages, can now find Architecture Elements. Previously one would have to use the RMM explorer page to drill down to the appropriate component / architecture element hierarchy to find the element. This may be difficult to remember the ‘path’ to this element, or it may be nested very deep, making it tedious to drill down to the correct location. The quick search offers a way to find architecture elements by searching for them by name. There are some cases where architecture elements may have the same name but be different types’ so the ability to filter to elements of a particular type is provided.

The screenshots below show this new ‘All Architecture Elements’ option in the ‘Quick Search’ menu along with the UI showing the ability to specify the architecture element name and an optional field for further scoping by type. Search results can appear right inside the quick search dialog.

Or the user can choose to have this search result be expanded in a separate table in RMM, allowing further exploration by sorting the Table by Name or Type, or to open the architecture element in the Rhapsody client in the current global configuration context.

Element display order

RMM now lists the elements on the RMM web UI in the same order as on the Rhapsody client, instead of modifying the list in alphabetical or any other order. The consistency in the order of the elements on both the Rhapsody client and the RMM web UI removes some potential disorientation the users.

Easily finding the History of an Architecture Element

A new “Show History” icon has been added for all architectural elements. Now, you can click the Show History icon on the Properties editor to see all changes that are made to any model element.

Additional Copy options for Architecture Elements/Diagrams

Options are available for copying specific artifact versions, or to have the version derived from a given GC / configuration.

You can use the Copy artifacts option from the Explorer or Properties editor view to copy the model element name, artifact link, or copy the artifact or diagram/table/matrix URL.

The list of copy options includes:

• Copy Text
• Copy Link
• Copy OSLC URL
  • as a concept UI
  • with a configuration context
  • as a versioned URL
• Copy Diagram/Matrix/Table URL
  • with a configuration context
  • as a versioned URL

Automatic Data Spill Handling

Remediating data spills in model data now requires less admin effort and provides higher system availability. In prior releases, in order to handle data spill scenarios (ex: purging sensitive information that was added by accident), an administrator first purged SCM file content (via a ‘Delete Content’ action in the EWM Eclipse client) followed by requesting a re-index of RMM data. Now RMM automatically does the second step, deleting appropriate RMM data as well as propagating relevant deletion requests to LQE, avoiding the need to perform a full reindex of RMM data, which can be a very time-consuming operation.

Learn about the other great improvements in the V7.0.3 ELM products by starting with Daniel’s post: Coming soon: IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management V7.0.3

Suneel Santharam
Rhapsody Product Manager