Yes in our case the act of applying any RTC update in CMVC ,cause some additional changes in CMVC item .For example when we modify "Abstract" in RTC CMVC 'summary' filed is modified and it also add a remark to that item telling about the old summary and new summary.
But in our current code we get those changes back in RTC through the 'returnedState' parameter of "updateState()" , i passed on the new state of CMVC item(With all the attributes) in "returnedState" parameter after my update was successfull and the changes are reflected to me in the RTC gui.
So in this case item connector client was not even called and CMVC item's new state is reflected back in RTC.

Now in continuation with above example ,in the absence of incoming supression ,incoming connector client will poll CMVC for updates (it will find modified 'summary' and 'remark')and will save them to external state. What will happen to these updates now?

Is this the situation when version number concept will be used to prevent these changes to be processed again?

Also about the caveat , its not problem in our case since item connetcor client will pick updates from CMVC in order only, as it queries CMVC server directlty for updates after end of polling interval.

Thanks a lot in advance for your support.

So if this is the way incoming client should work , my concern is that 'saveExternalState()' operation should be done only for updates from CMVC? What about the updates that are done from RTC and CMVC polling mechanishm has picked them up because of lack of incoming supression code?

In general, you shouldn't need to suppress incoming synchronization for updates that were caused by outgoing synchronization. In fact, if it is possible that the act of applying the outgoing changes will cause additional changes, then you would want those changes sent back in to RTC anyway. For example, in ClearQuest, hooks can fire whenever a record is modified, and those hooks can make further changes to the record. Theoretically, if nothing like that happens, so that the external record is in an equivalent state to the work item, then syncing the external state back in to RTC should be a no-op.

There is one caveat, however. If it is possible for the external system to sync in changes out of order, then newer states could be overwritten by older states. This is discussed in the wiki page at

https://jazz.net/wiki/bin/view/Main/ItemConnectorCreation#Guarding_against_data_overwrites

For example, ClearQuest records each have a version number that gets incremented on every commit. The CQ Connector includes that version number in the incoming data, and whenever it is about to send in some changes, it checks that the version number for the new changes is greater than the version number of the most recent state that has been synced in. If not, it doesn't send in the changes.

Yes i guess there is some design issue which is creating these type of problems for us.
Why external client used 'synchronizeIncomingAndWait' even i am not sure because the person did the coding for external client has left organization.
From your reply what i got to know that for incoming (CMVC->RTC) client should do the following:
1) Poll external repository(CMVC) after every specific period of time .
2) Do 'interopManager.saveExternalState()'
and this is add the updates from CMVC in a queue and both incoming and outgoing will execute this queue serially.
Correct me if i have missed something in above steps.

So if this is the way incoming client should work , my concern is that 'saveExternalState()' operation should be done only for updates from CMVC? What about the updates that are done from RTC and CMVC polling mechanishm has picked them up because of lack of incoming supression code?


Thanks in advance for your most needed and valuable support.

The short answer is, no, I don't think there is any way to coordinate the incoming and outgoing synchronization processes, since as you say, they are being driven by two different applications.

I'm wondering why you're calling the synchronizeIncomingAndWait method. Normally, external connector clients wouldn't do that; it's not mentioned in the connector development wiki page. Synchronization is automatically triggered whenever an ExternalState item is saved, so calling a "synchronize" method would trigger an additional synchronization operation on the last-synced-in ExternalState item. The synchronize methods exist in the API mainly for the Synchronization Status GUI, to implement the "retry" operations.

Also, both incoming and outgoing synchronization operations are queued for a particular item. In other words, they run serially, not in parallel. So if outgoing synchronization is occurring for some work item, and incoming data is received for that item, it is added to a queue of pending synchronization operations for that item, rather than immediately executed. So I'm not sure whether the fact that the incoming and outgoing synchronization processes are uncoordinated is really the source of any problems you're seeing. It might be better to see exactly what the problems are.

Hi John,
I am back with some more queries.As per item connector framework on jazz,net , we have created a seperate java application for incoming(CMVC-RTC) with calls the following method
interopmanager.synchronizeIncomingAndWait()
for all its updates from CMVC.And a server plugin for outgoing(RTC->CMVC).
As per our current design both these applications dont interact directly with each other and have different polling time.
The missing part here is that we dont have any common point of interaction for both incoming and outgoing, so we dont have any means to know that the CMVC update, incoming connector recieves is from RTC or CMVC .So currently we pick last update from CMVC and compare the state with that of RTC and do the needfull.
Now the problem we are facing is that when RTC is sending some sequence of updates to CMVC , and in between the incoming wakes up and poll CMVC and start synchronizing the updates from CMVC to RTC. ( RTC has not completed its updates yet).This causes some unexpected errors and situations.
Is there any other way to make incoming and outgoing work in synchronized way i.e outgoing can notify incoming when done with its updates.

Hi John,
I am back with some more queries.As per item connector framework on jazz,net , we have created a seperate java application for incoming(CMVC-RTC) with calls the following method
interopmanager.synchronizeIncomingAndWait()
for all its updates from CMVC.And a server plugin for outgoing(RTC->CMVC).
As per our current design both these applications dont interact directly with each other and have different polling time.
The missing part here is that we dont have any common point of interaction for both incoming and outgoing, so we dont have any means to know that the CMVC update, incoming connector recieves is from RTC or CMVC .So currently we pick last update from CMVC and compare the state with that of RTC and do the needfull.
Now the problem we are facing is that when RTC is sending some sequence of updates to CMVC , and in between the incoming wakes up and poll CMVC and start synchronizing the updates from CMVC to RTC. ( RTC has not completed its updates yet).This causes some unexpected errors and situations.
Is there any other way to make incoming and outgoing work in synchronized way i.e outgoing can notify incoming when done with its updates.

The error messages from any exceptions thrown by a manager method are captured and included in the "last synchronization attempt" info, so you should just be able to throw exceptions with the messages you want to see.

I can't think of any way to handle your state mapping issue other than to write your own value transformer, which would somehow have to determine what kind of CMVC process is in use, and therefore decide whether "resolve" should map to "verify" or "closed.

Hi,
I am back with some queries on item connector.I am working on outgoing synchronization part of external repository connection.

Firstly, Is there any way i can display my connector failure messages in "synchronization status" page in the column "last synchronization attempt" ?
I generally find the page very helpful as it tell me about conflict and other messages , but can i customize the messages to tell more detail reason as to why the update or create action failed. I currently display them in logs.

Secondly , My external repository (CMVC) has some processes configured ,because of which defect state varies in CMVC.
Like if "verify subprocess" exist defect state will be open->working->verify-> closed
and if no "verify subprocess" state will be open->working-> closed Now in my sync rule my mapping is as follows
New= Open
In progress= working
resolve= verify
verify= closed

I dont want to chnage my sync rule with processes on CMVC side .So now if my CMVC defect doesnt have "verify subprocess" and user move defect from "In progress" to " resolve".CMVC will move defect from "working" to " close"

and synchronization status will show me conflict becuase "closed" state is not mapped to "resolve".

Is there any way to resolve the issue beside adding new mapping of "Resolve= closed "in sync rule.

However incoming synchronization when triggered with move RTC state to "verified" which can resolve conflict but till then WI status will be "conflict".

what is the right way to handle such situations.

Hi,
I am back with some queries on item connector.I am working on outgoing synchronization part of external repository connection.

Firstly, Is there any way i can display my connector failure messages in "synchronization status" page in the column "last synchronization attempt" ?
I generally find the page very helpful as it tell me about conflict and other messages , but can i customize the messages to tell more detail reason as to why the update or create action failed. I currently display them in logs.

Secondly , My external repository (CMVC) has some processes configured ,because of which defect state varies in CMVC.
Like if "verify subprocess" exist defect state will be open->working->verify-> closed
and if no "verify subprocess" state will be open->working-> closed Now in my sync rule my mapping is as follows
New= Open
In progress= working
resolve= verify
verify= closed

I dont want to chnage my sync rule with processes on CMVC side .So now if my CMVC defect doesnt have "verify subprocess" and user move defect from "In progress" to " resolve".CMVC will move defect from "working" to " close"

and synchronization status will show me conflict becuase "closed" state is not mapped to "resolve".

Is there any way to resolve the issue beside adding new mapping of "Resolve= closed "in sync rule.

However incoming synchronization when triggered with move RTC state to "verified" which can resolve conflict but till then WI status will be "conflict".

what is the right way to handle such situations.

The Uninitialized status means that a proxy was created in Jazz for an external object, but no data for it has been synchronized. If your client created the proxy objects, you'll have to investigate why it didn't synchronize in any data. If you open the synchronization status, are there any error messages?

Hi John

While synchronizing users, some of the users are not getting synchronization status OK but instead they are getting synchronization status 'Uninitialized'. What does this status means and how I can make it OK status ?

-Ankur