Hi Dave,

I take it you've been browsing the Interop component APIs? The Interop
component is a generic mechanism which can be used to implement
interoperation with external repositories, not something that a Jazz user
can make direct use of. We're using it to implement interoperation with
Rational ClearQuest.

The basic idea is that objects in an external repository can be associated
with analogous objects in a Jazz repository. Properties of the external
object can be imported into Jazz and then applied to properties of the
associated Jazz object, and vice versa. The ExternalProxy type represents
the linkage between a Jazz object and an external object, and also the
current state of the synchronization between the two objects.
"Synchronization rules" must be defined to declare how properties are
mapped between Jazz and external objects.

At this point (in the currently released builds), there is essentially no
support for interoperating with any particular type of Jazz object; only
the generic framework is there. As I said, we're using it to create an
interoperation mechanism between ClearQuest records and Jazz work items,
but none of that is included in any current builds. So the answer to your
question about limitations is essentially "totally limited", in that there
really isn't enough there yet for someone outside the Jazz development
team to use.

As far as process operations go, any modifications to Jazz objects that
are on behalf of interoperation will be subject to the same process rules
as if a user tried to do the same modifications. The Interop component is
acting as an "agent" for the external repository user. Changes from an
external repository may or may not be successfully applied to a Jazz
object, depending on process rules.

Hope this helps,

John

Hi Michael,

We are using ClearQuest. We have modeled our process in ClearQuest.
I don't know the details of our ClearQuest customization, but I know
it was heavily customized. I would expect that we would have to do
some work to map our ClearQuest entries to Jazz work items. Or is
the ClearQuest integration generic enough to work with any ClearQuest
schema?

It's certainly our intention to make it as generic and flexible as
possible, but I'd hesitate to say that it will truly support *any*
schema, since ClearQuest schema design is pretty wide open, while
Jazz items have fairly fixed properties. You can dream up all kinds
of fields for CQ records, not all of which will be directly mappable
to Jazz work item properties. Of course, you could only map the
subset that is mappable, or also cause the non-mappable fields to
be stored as custom attributes on work items.

The other caveat is that we'll support a number of straightforward
transformations between CQ and Jazz property values (e.g. straight
copy, or mapping one enumeration to another), but for anything
complicated or unusual, you'd have to write Java code to implement
your own mapping algorithms.

John

Hi John,

As I said, we're using it to create an
interoperation mechanism between ClearQuest records and Jazz work items,
but none of that is included in any current builds.

We are using ClearQuest. We have modeled our process in ClearQuest.
I don't know the details of our ClearQuest customization, but I know
it was heavily customized. I would expect that we would have to do
some work to map our ClearQuest entries to Jazz work items. Or is
the ClearQuest integration generic enough to work with any ClearQuest
schema?

Michael

Dave,

The process specification in project areas and the process customization in
team areas list only those process enabled operations, e.g., scm client
deliver, for which a specific behavior (permissions, advisors, participants)
is defined. In order to define process specific behavior you have to add the
process enabled operation to the process specification/customization and
define its permissions, advisors, and participants. The list of predefined
advisors and participants is currently only discoverable by using content
assist inside the advisors/participants XML element. The same holds true for
event handlers, only that you have to list the events for which you want to
have custom behavior. We will provide better discoverability means. The
concrete timeline is not yet fixed.

Customizing the process in team areas and changing the process specification
of a project area are process enabled operations themselves. This means that
process defines which roles have the permission to execute this operations.
Thus, it depends on whether these operations are limited to an Admin role or
are available for others as well.

We will work on a better presentation of process specific information such
as where does the process configuration for a given operation comes from
when this operation is executed in the context of a given team area by
somebody playing a given set of roles. This will allow for a better
understanding of what the actually active process for a given team area/role
set combination looks like and how it gets composed at runtime. The concrete
timeline for this work is not yet fixed.

Cheers, Kai



"Dave Colasurdo" <davecola@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:f2fn3t$kpt$1@localhost.localdomain...

Thanks for the info John!

Some new questions regarding team process.

1) Does/will the jazz framework and it's components provide a set of
predefined process advisors/participants and event process handlers that
can be enabled/disabled/tweaked so that an administrator can change
process flow? Is there a list of somewhere? I didn't see these when
navigating the "process state" and "process implementation" views in the
Jazz .5 binary image

2) Are there any plans for a more graphical representation of overall
process flow when customizing the process definition? I've played with
the content-assist feature though it still results in xml input.

Thanks
-Dave-


jrvasta@us.ibm.com wrote:
Hi Dave,

I take it you've been browsing the Interop component APIs? The Interop
component is a generic mechanism which can be used to implement
interoperation with external repositories, not something that a Jazz user
can make direct use of. We're using it to implement interoperation with
Rational ClearQuest.

The basic idea is that objects in an external repository can be
associated with analogous objects in a Jazz repository. Properties of the
external object can be imported into Jazz and then applied to properties
of the associated Jazz object, and vice versa. The ExternalProxy type
represents the linkage between a Jazz object and an external object, and
also the current state of the synchronization between the two objects.
"Synchronization rules" must be defined to declare how properties are
mapped between Jazz and external objects.

At this point (in the currently released builds), there is essentially no
support for interoperating with any particular type of Jazz object; only
the generic framework is there. As I said, we're using it to create an
interoperation mechanism between ClearQuest records and Jazz work items,
but none of that is included in any current builds. So the answer to your
question about limitations is essentially "totally limited", in that
there really isn't enough there yet for someone outside the Jazz
development team to use.

As far as process operations go, any modifications to Jazz objects that
are on behalf of interoperation will be subject to the same process rules
as if a user tried to do the same modifications. The Interop component is
acting as an "agent" for the external repository user. Changes from an
external repository may or may not be successfully applied to a Jazz
object, depending on process rules.

Hope this helps,

John