Integration HPQC - RRC: Links FROM HPQC to RRC possible?

Konrad O. (11●2●2) | asked Jan 21 '13, 5:25 a.m.
retagged Feb 07 '13, 1:40 p.m. by Douglas Bush (281●2●5)

Hello,
I am at a business partner at the moment who wants to integrate the HP Quality Center with Rational Requirements Composer. For this use he is interested in using the OSLC Adapter. He is no fan of synchronization and do not want to replace HPQC.
I have found lots of information about this topic, but I haven´t found an example video or picture or something like that showing a link from HPQC to RRC, just the other way round.
http://open-services.net/software/hp-quality-center/ says that there is only a way to output data from HPQC and use that in Requirements Management.
But is there a chance to do that in the other direction?

I have asked a lot of people inside IBM right now, but nobody seems to know that.
Could anybody help me here?

Thank you for your help

Comments

Konrad O. commented Mar 01 '13, 3:36 p.m.

Hi Bret,
we want to host the solution ourself, but thank you for your answer.
We have tried the Rational Lifecycle Integration Adapter Standard-Edition 1.0 and Tasktop Edition 1.0. Nothing worked for us at the moment. Our plan is to contact Tasktop directly. Tasktop Sync 2.4 should be able to sync RRC Version 4.x (Tasktop Sync2.4), the Tasktop Edition Standard Adapter is only able to sync RTC in version 1.0.

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Robin Bater (3.4k●4●7) | answered Jan 21 '13, 9:16 a.m.
JAZZ DEVELOPER
edited Jan 21 '13, 10:46 a.m.

Hi Konrad,

Not sure if you have seen this article on the IBM Rational Adapter for HP ALM https://jazz.net/library/article/1208 but it might help at little, as well as this blog https://jazz.net/blog/index.php/2012/10/22/extending-your-rational-alm-solutions-to-third-party-tools-with-the-ibm-rational-lifecycle-integration-adapters/ that includes a pointer to this video HP adapter demo (includes OSLC overview) Speaker: William Jones

To be able to support OSLC linking in both directions requires all products to natively include this capability.

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Samuel Padgett (217●2) | answered Jan 21 '13, 9:59 a.m.
JAZZ DEVELOPER

Konrad, using the HP ALM Adapter that Robin talks about, you can see links to RRC from within the HP ALM client. You can also click a toolbar button inside of HP ALM that opens a new browser window to create links. For instance, if I'm a tester looking at test case in HP ALM, I can click the toolbar button and open a page that allows me to link that test case to an RRC requirement. This is adapter is based on OSLC and does not use synchronization.

Comments

Guido Schneider commented Feb 07 '13, 3:02 p.m.

Hi Sam, is it also possible to link from/to with RTC? We do not only tests requirements we also test stories and stories we have just in RTC.

Samuel Padgett commented Feb 07 '13, 3:59 p.m.

JAZZ DEVELOPER

Guido, yes, we support links to RTC work items in the same way. You can create the links from the adapter or from RTC. You can also link RTC change sets to HP ALM defects if you use RTC source control.

0	permanent link Konrad O. (11●2●2) \| answered Jan 22 '13, 6:04 a.m. Hello again, your both right, that is what I was looking for. Thank you for your fast response ;-)

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Saran Kathirvelu (36●9●11) | answered Jan 22 '13, 3:50 p.m.

Samuel, Are you sure that RRC links can be viewed from within the HP ALM Client? My understanding from the IBM demo is that the tester can view RRC links only in the HP ALM adapter (accessing from the toolbar icon in HP ALM client).

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Samuel Padgett commented Jan 22 '13, 4:04 p.m.

JAZZ DEVELOPER

Hi, Saran. You can see the links on the Attachments tab of record in the HP ALM client. They are in the description field for the oslclinks attachment. To add or remove links, however, you have to open the adapter using the toolbar button.

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Konrad O. (11●2●2) | answered Feb 01 '13, 5:52 a.m.

So I have tried this scenario now... it doesn´t work very well for HPQC.
It is possible to create links from RRC requirements to HPQC testcases without any problems. The preview gets data from HPQC, but is displaying a warning, that the overview could be incomplete (who cares, the important things are displayed ;-) ). The possible link types are validated by and references.

Links out of RRC artifacts to HPQC testcases/defects

Links out of RRC artifacts to HPQC testcases/defects

When I click on them, they forward me to the HP-ALM-Connector-Webinterface which looks similar to a limited view of RRC and shows me some more details (or errors like in picture). On the right edge there is a button "Launch HP", this tries to open an link formated as "td://Project_Name.IP_ADDRESS_OF_SERVER:-1/qcbin/Test%20Plan?Action=FindTest&TestID=58"

View from Adapter

To open such a link you need to install the HP TD_Connect.exe - Plugin from HPQC.
This should be able to open an Internet Explorer Window and will jump to the resource. So should it be in theory.
The TD_Connect - Plugin creates a lot of trouble on my test system. The ALM-Client of HP crashes by loading. If you closes it by Taskmanager the IE-Window displays nothing, sometimes freezes. Then you can open an other tab and open it again. Then sometimes it opens and you can authenticate, sometimes an error message appears saying that 'Q9-Adapter' couldn´t be initialized.

The other way round is not good implemented. There are 3 buttons which you can include in HPQC by adding some VB-Script lines. One button just opens a CM-Dashboard, an other opens a RM-Dashboard and the last button opens the Rational Adapter Interface showing the HPQC resource. If you have just referenced an artifact this link would be shown. If you have used the validated by link type the error will appear like in last picture and I am not able to see which RRC artifacts were linked to the testcase.

I try to get contact to Tasktop right now asking for their solution, but I have still no answer.

Have anybody an idea of dealing with TD-Connect? I have tried Win8, Win7 and WinXP using IE8 and IE9.
Disabling UAC in Win7 does not work as well.
I start to believe that the problem with that is on HP side with the version 11 of HPQC but I have no version of 10 to try that.

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Samuel Padgett (217●2) | answered Feb 01 '13, 8:57 a.m.
JAZZ DEVELOPER

Hi, Konrad. The error you see loading the test case in the adapter is definitely not expected. If you could send us the hpqm.log file from the Tomcat logs/ directory, we might be able to tell what is going on. We also could set up a web sharing session to troubleshoot if you like. I'd like to help you get past these problems so that you can properly evaluate the adapter.

The warning about links you see is a known issue specific to 4.0.1. We have a fix ready for an upcoming LIA fix pack.

We've seen some problems with the td:// URLs as well. You might need to ask HP support to help with this. I have had better luck using IE to open these links, but we've had problems on systems where IE is not the default browser.

The -1 in the URL does not look right, however. What port do you have HP ALM running on?

The other way round is not good implemented. There are 3 buttons which you can include in HPQC by adding some VB-Script lines. One button just opens a CM-Dashboard, an other opens a RM-Dashboard and the last button opens the Rational Adapter Interface showing the HPQC resource. If you have just referenced an artifact this link would be shown. If you have used the validated by link type the error will appear like in last picture and I am not able to see which RRC artifacts were linked to the testcase.

Is the problem the error you're seeing, or do you not like the approach in general? Note that you can see the validated by links directly in the HP ALM client on the attachments tab, although to add and remove links you need to open the adapter.

My email is spadgett@us.ibm.com if you'd like to send me your log files or set up a web meeting.

Thanks for your feedback,

Sam

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JM Seo (26●2●2) | answered Aug 15 '13, 12:53 a.m.

Hi,

a bit old thread but just want to share what I've been doing in terms of RRC and HP QC integration since I feel I'm suffering the same pain.

Due to the dominance of HP QC in testing area, integration with RRC or RTC is quite on demand. I found it's more easier to use open API (mainly REST) to link between test and requirement resources should accommodate real-practice then RLIA. Don't get me wrong, I found both RLIA standard and Tasktop edition are brilliant but hard to manage and not flexible enough to support SDLC Process no matter it's traditional or agile.

Charlie

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Theresa Ramsey (191●5) | answered Aug 15 '13, 10:29 a.m.
JAZZ DEVELOPER

Hi Charlie,

Can you tell us more about why you don't think RLIA is hard to manage? and what additional flexibility you require? We will continue to add functionality to RLIA based on customer input. We welcome yours!

Thanks,

Theresa

Comments

Robin Bater commented Aug 15 '13, 11:58 a.m.

JAZZ DEVELOPER

Charlie, it would be great if you could also tell us about any reports (e.g. test coverage, test cases blocked by defects) that you use with this integration. We are trying to get a sense of which reports are most important.

JM Seo commented Aug 15 '13, 7:40 p.m.

Hi Theresa & Robin,

In large organisation, it tends to operate BA and Test team in different silos, which makes sense by complexity and scale of work. From my understanding, standard edition provides data linkage model and tasktop is more data replication. In case of working in different silos, linkage model seems not working very well due to following points.

With the fact that Requirement Change control is hard to be implemented in RRC, high chance of delivering wrong version with traceability. If multiple releases need to be managed through a QC project as well as a RRC project, testers could get messed up with using wrong version of requirement. Additionally, the technical limitation that a RRC link using REST API can only point to the lastest version makes this more difficult.

JM Seo commented Aug 15 '13, 7:41 p.m.

Secondly, allocating requirements into a test case is not an easy scenario. RLIA provide the functionality to create test cases per a requirement in a collection. This automation should make testers' life easier but reality might not be. If we look at the persona in this action, that would be a tester. Tester would create a test case based on requirements (not singular). Which indicates it should be not only 1 : 1 allocation but N:N. When a test case might need to validate more than one requirement, using RLIA you won't be able to do this so you need to create a trace to TC in RRC. As you know, getting them to use multiple tools won't be a pleasant topic. Also TC name by duplicating requirement title wouldn't be helpful with test practice I believe.

Samuel Padgett commented Sep 03 '13, 4:37 p.m.

JAZZ DEVELOPER

Hi, Charlie. For what it's worth, the links are many-to-many, and you can link a test case to more than one requirement. You don't necessarily have to use the test case generation, which generates 1:1. It's there for convenience.

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Theresa Ramsey (191●5) | answered Aug 27 '13, 6:32 p.m.
JAZZ DEVELOPER

Hi Charlie,

Thanks for your input. Can you expand upon "Requirement Change control is hard to be implemented in RRC"? How does your company handle different req versions today? How do you ensure the testers are using the right version of the requirement for test? Do you edit requirements over time (and point testers to a specific version) or do you make a copy of all requirements and edit them for a new release? What change to RRC would make this easier for your company?

The HP adapter 1.1 can tell if there has been a change to a requirement and flag the link to the test case in HP ALM as 'suspect'. The tester can then review the changes to the requirement to see if the test case needs updating or not. (See http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/rliahelp/v1r1/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.rational.rlia.hpqc.doc%2Ftopics%2Ft_hpalm_suspect_links.html)
Do you think this is a useful function?

Currently, the HP adapter can create a test case per requirement (1:1). We are also considering other options; the simple 1:1 case was the easiest to explain, implement and use that we could do. It would take some planning for BA and QA teams to best setup/use their tool (RRC) to integrate with other tool (HP ALM). How do testers in your company create test cases from requirements now?

There are a few dashboard widgets, like "Test Cases Validating Requirements" and "Suspect Test Cases" that we added. (See http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/rliahelp/v1r1/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.rational.rlia.hpqc.doc%2Ftopics%2Ft_hpalm_OSgadgets_add.html for full list.) Are there other widgets or reports you might find useful?

Thanks,
Theresa

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