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Force unique snapshot names


Jeff Care (1.0k3833) | asked Mar 09 '11, 9:50 a.m.
Is there a way to enforce a process rule that snapshot names must be unique? I was very easily able to create a snapshot with a non-unique name, on the same workspace as the original no less. I poked around in the "Operational Behavior" section of the team area process config and I don't even see any triggers for snapshot creation.

The ability to enforce unique snapshot names is pretty important for my organization's potential adoption of RTC SCM and we need a way to enforce it beyond telling an organization of 400+ developers & testers not to create duplicates.

How can we do this?

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Tim Mok (6.6k38) | answered Mar 09 '11, 6:22 p.m.
JAZZ DEVELOPER
Is there a way to enforce a process rule that snapshot names must be unique? I was very easily able to create a snapshot with a non-unique name, on the same workspace as the original no less. I poked around in the "Operational Behavior" section of the team area process config and I don't even see any triggers for snapshot creation.

The ability to enforce unique snapshot names is pretty important for my organization's potential adoption of RTC SCM and we need a way to enforce it beyond telling an organization of 400+ developers & testers not to create duplicates.

How can we do this?
I don't think this is supported. Only unique component names can be enabled as a server setting.

You may want to open an enhancement work item for this.

Are you intending all developers to create snapshots on the same stream? If developers are creating snapshots on streams, it can get confusing when the same name is used. If developers are creating them on their own workspaces, each developer can look at snapshots of his/her own workspace.

You can also restrict permissions on saving a snapshot (aka creating a snapshot). Then you can assign special roles to users that really require the ability to create snapshots. This can help minimize random snapshots being created in a common area like an integration stream.
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Jeff Care (1.0k3833) | answered Mar 09 '11, 11:27 p.m.
I don't think this is supported. Only unique component names can be enabled as a server setting.

You may want to open an enhancement work item for this.

Are you intending all developers to create snapshots on the same stream? If developers are creating snapshots on streams, it can get confusing when the same name is used. If developers are creating them on their own workspaces, each developer can look at snapshots of his/her own workspace.

You can also restrict permissions on saving a snapshot (aka creating a snapshot). Then you can assign special roles to users that really require the ability to create snapshots. This can help minimize random snapshots being created in a common area like an integration stream.


I care mostly about preventing people from creating snapshots that have the same names as those created by our build engine. I don't want to restrict snapshot creation to special roles if I can help it.

Having a setting that would enforce global uniqueness would solve my problem but maybe it's a bit of a sledgehammer. I think that adding operation behavior triggers around snapshot creation might give us more flexibility.

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Tim Mok (6.6k38) | answered Mar 10 '11, 9:23 a.m.
JAZZ DEVELOPER
I don't think this is supported. Only unique component names can be enabled as a server setting.

You may want to open an enhancement work item for this.

Are you intending all developers to create snapshots on the same stream? If developers are creating snapshots on streams, it can get confusing when the same name is used. If developers are creating them on their own workspaces, each developer can look at snapshots of his/her own workspace.

You can also restrict permissions on saving a snapshot (aka creating a snapshot). Then you can assign special roles to users that really require the ability to create snapshots. This can help minimize random snapshots being created in a common area like an integration stream.


I care mostly about preventing people from creating snapshots that have the same names as those created by our build engine. I don't want to restrict snapshot creation to special roles if I can help it.

Having a setting that would enforce global uniqueness would solve my problem but maybe it's a bit of a sledgehammer. I think that adding operation behavior triggers around snapshot creation might give us more flexibility.If you're worried about the build engine snapshot names conflicting, your users would have to name their snapshots after a build and the time it started. Plus, the snapshots are owned by the workspace used for the build. That should help organize the snapshots so users won't get their own snapshots mixed up with the build snapshots.

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Jeff Care (1.0k3833) | answered Mar 10 '11, 9:45 a.m.
If you're worried about the build engine snapshot names conflicting, your users would have to name their snapshots after a build and the time it started. Plus, the snapshots are owned by the workspace used for the build. That should help organize the snapshots so users won't get their own snapshots mixed up with the build snapshots.


We're using our own build engine, not the JBE. We will be creating & discarding workspaces dynamically in our engine implementation so querying against the owning workspace is of little practical value for us.

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