Advantage of different visibility of links, comments and tags?
Hello everybody,
In my point of view the behavior of DNG regarding the visibility of links is very confusing. After reading the DNG documentation I understand how it works but not why it works on this way.
Link to the documentation: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSYMRC_5.0.2/com.ibm.rational.rrm.help.doc/topics/t_reuse_artifacts_modules.html?lang=en
I don’t understand what the advantage is to see links tags and comments not equal in every context (base artifact or module).
For example I create a specification using a module. Then I will use the drag & drop link feature within the module. All links I will create on this way won´t be visible in the “base” Artifact View. Why? What is the logic behind this behavior? Does anyone have a use case where the different visibility of comments, links and tags make sense?
I am grateful for any hint.Accepted answer
4 other answers
However the use case I think they are trying to meet is for re-usable requirements. For example, say you have a legal compliance requirement that you need all of your products to meet. You could create this as a base artefact once (so that if the law changes in future you only make the change in one place) and then include it in a numebr of modules for each separate product. But when you want to link those requirements to design elements or test activities you would want to do that at the 'where used in a module' level not on the base artefact - otherwise all of those links would be visible to every product team.
Comments
Hello Phil,
thank you for your hint with the Link Explorer issue. I think this is a big disadvantage of DNG because you cannot maintain the tractability of all Artefacts.
Perhaps I am misunderstanding something - but I create links at the module level (not on base artefacts) and the link explorer shows these links for me.
Yes the link explorer shows you this links, but he shows you only the links which are created within the module.
For example: You create 3 artifacts (A B C). You create a link A to B by using the artifact view. Now you create a link B to C within the module. The link explorer of the "base" artifact shows you only the AB Link and the link explorer in the module will only displays the BC Link (also if you use the "Include links, tags and comments from base artifacts" button). You cannot see a "global" links structure from A to B to C.
I see what you are saying. We create links only at the module level (note: still between modules, just in the 'module context' - it is this kind of terminology that I think creates the most confusion) specifically because of this and the other visibility issues that you get with linking to the base artefacts.
But - if you do that then things work fine. I.e. it is possible (with some care) to ignore the ability to link to base artefacts and to get a system with full end-to-end traceability.
I agree with the fundamental point though - that it could be tidied up.
Is the best practice in this case is to create all links in the artifact view? What you think about it?
In my opinion you only have a complete end to end traceability if you create the links outside of the module. Within the module you can add the base Links with the “Include links, tags and comments from base artifacts”
Comments
As I am not generally re-using artefacts in multiple modules and because links to base artefacts are not shown by default I always link to the module version. Everything seems to work fine for me so far doing this (as long as I don't accidentally create a link to a base artefact - which is easy to do).