Questions regarding Lab Manager customization
Hi,
the company I'm working for is currently evaluating Rational Quality Manager and Lab Manager as a replacement for a home-grown lab resource management system. I've been browsing the Jazz site documentation, wiki, forum) but I haven't been able to find answers to all my questions. Therefore, I would greatly appreciate any feedback on the following questions: (1) Is the lab resource data schema customizable? Out of the box, the lab manager allows you to fill in information about each resource. However, the pre-defined resource data schema does not quite cut it for our purposes. Now I'm wondering if this schema is fixed or if it is possible to add new resource metadata fields? Furthermore, is it possible to add new resource types, and if so, is it possible to define relationships between resource types? (2) If the lab resource data schema is not customizable via user interations, does the Lab Manager offer any "developer hooks" for extending the schema, for example in terms of a REST API, Eclipse plug-in points, OSGi services, or something along those lines? (3) Does the Lab Manager expose a REST API? If so, is it published somewhere? (I noticed that the Quality Manager API is published on the wiki but I can't seem to find an API for the Lab Manager). Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks, Peter |
3 answers
Hi Peter,
The Lab Resource schema is very customizable, and it does support types, attributes, and nested hierarchy. I think you'll find all the functionality that you and your customer need. Refer to the doc here: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/rqmhelp/v2r0/topic/com.ibm.rational.test.lm.doc/topics/t_cust_labres_prop.html It can also be customized via the REST API but the UI is easier. Lab Manager does expose its artifacts through the REST API. It's all here, with the rest of the RQM artifacts: http://jazz.net/projects/rational-quality-manager/api-doc-2.0/ For instance, labresource represents a machine in Lab Manager. Hope that helps. Regards, John Hi, |
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Thanks John.
I am still trying to understand the basic workings of the lab manager in general, and its data model in particular. The following is my understanding of how things work in the lab manager: - via the web UI it is only possible to create new lab resources of type "Machine" and "Virtual Image". "Instances" of other types, such as "IP Interface", "Operating System", and custom created types cannot be directly created via the web UI, but can only be "indirectly" created while creating a Machine/Virtual Image. - The previous bullet implies that the lab manager data model does not support modelling one or more resources sharing another lab resource. That is, there is no real mechanism to model that two machines are referencing _the same_ printer, for instance. Rather, a printer would need to be filled in once for every machine it is associated with. That is, an "instance" of the printer would only exist in the sense that several Machines have equal values for the Operating System attribute. Are these observations correct or have I misunderstood something? best regards, Peter |
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Sorry, typo on my behalf:
That is, an "instance" of the printer would only exist in the sense that several Machines have equal values for the Operating System attribute. should read That is, an "instance" of the printer would only exist in the sense that several Machines have equal values for the printer attributes. |
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