What can RPE do?
I'm looking to write a presentation about RPE for colleagues at work. We use RPE, but not very well and not consistently.
I know the overview is that RPE is a document generation tool, but I believe that undersells it, equally, I don't want to oversell it (if I make it a silver bullet and one thing proves 'difficult' my bosses will throw it out)..
Is there a simple, non-verbose, definitive list of what you can actually do with RPE? The IBM website does a very good job of making it seem like an expensive tool that mere mortals aren't clever enough to use but doesn't give such a list.
Would someone be able to point me to a, or give me their own, list of what it can do (not how it does it)?
Many thanks in advance.
2 answers
You can go through PUB (aka RPE) playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5D39ABB5C9864F85
You can use PUB to automate the generation of documents for ad hoc use, formal reviews, contractual obligations or regulatory compliance. Built-in capabilities extract data from a range of data sources to help reduce manual work and risk of errors. PUB provides: - Documents and reports—generate high-quality documents with flexible formatting as well as composite reports containing data from multiple sources. - Outputs—support multiple output formats and concurrent document generation to multiple target formats from a single template.
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Thanks for the links.
Though the blurb is from the IBM website, it's basically saying it can produce a document. I'd like to know things such as if RPE should be used to produce a metrics report, and could it create/manipulate MS Office to create the graphs for the report?
Hi Calum,
Publishing (formerly RPE) is used mainly for document generation like for compliance, contract delivery, etc. Generating metric is not its focus. I suggest to use Jazz Reporting Service with LQE if you are looking for statistical data.
Thanks Fariz,
That's exactly the sort of thing I need to know.
I recommend that you find a newer tool.
My impression of RPE is from attempting to get well formatted reports out of DOORS Next Generation 6.x (DNG6) in spreadsheet (Excel) and MSWord table formats. I've encountered it before over previous decades, and I regard it as a huge package of functionality that has grown so obsolete that it is unsustainable. For DNG6 it cannot deliver spreadsheet output and to create MSWord tables from linked data required embeded JavaScript programs paired with specially built maps of the structure which are so embeded and so specific that they are impossible to maintain.
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I'm not using it with DOORS Next - I've read a bit that suggests DOORS Next is not a good move either.
I've managed to get RPE to quite a bit of stuff using well set up DOORS Classic modules without requiring any Java, I've only needed that when the DOORS modules have been set up and used badly.
But I'd still like to know what the accepted functionality of RPE is.