I followed the setup and looked high & low for the LDAP button thats mentioned in the documentation. Its not there. I thought never mind, the wizard must have a headache, Ill hack around a little instead. I found the teamserver.properties file, which had some configuration in it, and various posts, which hinted at the sort of parameters that needed to be in there (including the helpful LDAP4Dummies Im not quite one of those, but I would like an LDAP4OldGitsWhoUseActiveDirectory). However, there doesnt seem to be a readily accessible version of the syntax definition for the file, and following the hints to set the registry.type to LDAP, I get an error secreted away in the jazz.log file to tell me that I shouldnt have done that. Theres no other documentation about the parameters that may be wanted to map fields from an LDAP service.

I feared that I must have missed something, so I updated to the Ifix2 release. I understand it may have represented progress as another post has suggested that LDAP is only recently supported. I managed to download the zip after only two attempts this time (getting up very early whilst the righteous slumbered helped). Bug fix? Nope: the LDAP button is still missing; and the server still croaks if told to use it.

I confess I dont understand the commercial strategy here. The entry level edition of a product may be expected to have been lacking in some of the richer features of its big cousin (or even suffer the fate of Multics), but it makes little sense to remove the deployment mechanism. The latter is the shop window if it doesnt work smoothly, easily and as documented, those with worse manners and humour than me are likely to slag it off and ditch the whole. They certainly wont be encouraged to move on and up, and absolutely will not be lauding its praises in polite company.

So, my question is is RTC meant as a serious solution to software change management, or should we treat it as a toy? If I cant deploy it, and I cant use a major piece of the claimed functionality, Ill conclude the latter. And I certainly will not be advising a major corporate client that seeks improved software process to consider it.

So, my question is is RTC meant as a serious solution to software change management, or should we treat it as a toy? If I cant deploy it, and I cant use a major piece of the claimed functionality, Ill conclude the latter. And I certainly will not be advising a major corporate client that seeks improved software process to consider it.

I'm afraid that I feel compelled to post my experiences of attempted
deployment of RTC. I've been forced to look down this route because
of the impending demise of Clear Case and its links with CQ. RTC was
presented as a natural progression that would take us away from the
niggles of those terribly old-fashioned systems. Staying where we are
is not an option: we advise other companies on software tools and
methods. CC& CQ are effectively dead for new deployment, and we
need to be offer a strong alternative.
...

Thanks for all your comments on my original post.

Ralph has helpfully gone through the setup procedure and pointed out where to put LDAP information. Unfortunately, that was all apparent from reading the documentation in the first place. He has succinctly described the steps that I took. Specifically, the step in 5.2 of the setup procedure is missing. There is no button to enable LDAP to be chosen. I had (attempted to) follow exactly the process he described.

As Ralph points out, it should be pretty straightforward to get this far: Im afraid that it would suggest that this element of RTC has not been exercised during the development teams pre-release validation for either version 2.0.0.2 or the subsequent iFix2.

My fundamental point though is that if one is to release a down-graded version of a product to meet small-scale use or for some other purpose, its as well to omit the more specialised features. System security is pretty fundamental. Im advised to evaluate with a commercial version. 30 days and 30 nights in the RTC desert may lead me from temptation, but it may well not provide me with the degree of experience necessary to obtain a proper feeling about the products philosophy. Maybe naively, I assumed that the express version was built for small teams and longer term evaluation. I can cope with the omission of automated population of the security database, but leaving out the basic security mechanism is not an option. Since its billed as being included, but its also inaccessible, my confidence in the product is unlikely to be strengthened.

As for the comments re: Clear Case. I have been a long standing paying customer of that products LT variant. It was declared as being at life end in November 2008. We were advised to move to RTC (and very specifically to the Express-C version) as a replacement for small scale use. I gather from the comments that the pejorative description in my first post should have read non-commercial.