Rough estimate about efford to integrate a SCM system.

To be clear, what we provide in RTC for Subversion is a "bridge" between
Subversion and the Jazz Workitem system (not the Jazz SCM system), where
a "bridge" is a link between objects in two different repositories, and
a UI mechanism for traversing the link.

In contrast, what we provide in the ItemConnector component is a
"synchronizer", while like a bridge, provides a link between objects in
two different repositories, but unlike a bridge, keeps the
content/properties of those two objects "in-sync" (but applying changes
made in one object to its linked object).

So a "bridge" can defined that links any two kinds of objects, while a
"synchronizer" can only link two objects of the same kind, in order to
allow changes in one object to be applied to the other.

In RTC today, we use the ItemConnector component to synchronize a
workitem in RTC with a change-request record in ClearQuest (a Jazz
workitem is the same "kind" of object as a ClearQuest change-request),
and we use the SCM Connector component to synchronize a stream in RTC
with a stream or branch-type in ClearCase.

So back to your question, you'd first want to decide whether you want a
"bridge" from the customer's SCM system to the Jazz workitem system (in
which case you could look at the existing Subversion bridge code), or
whether you want a "synchronizer" from objects in the customer's SCM
system to the corresponding kind of object in the Jazz SCM system (in
which case you could look at the SCM Connector component used by the
ClearCase Connector).

Cheers,
Geoff



Florian Georg wrote:

I know this can't be answered easily, as it depends on the degree of
integration... but generally speaking: Is it feasible to offer a RTC
customer to integrate Jazz SCM with their SCM system (like we do with
Subversion) with a reasonable efford (e.g. man weeks, not man months)?

I skimmed https://jazz.net/wiki/bin/view/Main/ItemConnectorCreation ,
but I'm still not sure how complex such an integration would be...

Anyone any experience with integrating external systems?

kind regards,
Florian

Your easiest option would be to have developers working in SCM system A and link their revisions to Jazz work items. This is the SVN bridge implementation. The simplest integration is to allow developers to pick a work item before they check-in in their tool A and record this in your other SCM system (eg, in SVN we store int the comment) and create a link on the RTC work item to point back. This is the simplest integration possible and it's time to develop is very much dependent on the tools available in the other SCM system. The good news is that you can use the SVN implementation source code a concrete example. This could take a month.

Importers and connectors are a lot more work. If you don't have a couple of months available, then I'd go with creating bi-directional links as described above.

Jazz Source Control Team
Jean-Michel

I know this can't be answered easily, as it depends on the degree of
integration... but generally speaking: Is it feasible to offer a RTC
customer to integrate Jazz SCM with their SCM system (like we do with
Subversion) with a reasonable efford (e.g. man weeks, not man months)?

I skimmed https://jazz.net/wiki/bin/view/Main/ItemConnectorCreation ,
but I'm still not sure how complex such an integration would be...

Anyone any experience with integrating external systems?

kind regards,
Florian