Rational Team Concert and Rational ClearQuest integration cookbook

Summary

This document provides guidance for deploying Rational Team Concert into an existing Rational ClearQuest environment. There are various types of integration capabilities between Rational Team Concert and Rational ClearQuest: the bridge, the synchronizer, and the importer. The goal of this document is to help you decide which integration capability best suits your current deployment or your future deployment plan. After reading this document, you will have a better understanding about the technologies that are available to you, as well as some of the deployment considerations.

The integration of Rational ClearQuest and Rational Team Concert is not a one-size-fits-all integration. Each user can have a unique integration deployment. It is beyond the scope of this document to discuss every possible type; therefore, this document provides a variety of resources that give you detailed information or videos on quick tour and extended topics.

Rational ClearQuest Bridge

The Rational ClearQuest Bridge provides a bi-directional traceability link from records in Rational ClearQuest to work items in Rational Team Concert. It is a linked-data type integration based on the Open Services for Life-cycle Collaboration (OSLC). It provides a seamless user experience with rich hover UI preview, and delegated dialogs including advanced selection dialogs, and fully functional creation dialogs. These dialogs support ClearsQuest record form layout and hooks. The bridge integration also enables ClearQuest live data on a Rational Team Concert dashboard.

Rational ClearQuest Bridge is primarily for users who want to continue to use Rational ClearQuest as a change management system, but also want to take advantage of other features of Rational Team Concert, such as agile planning and dashboards. You do not have to change your current usage of Rational ClearQuest, but you can enhance your Rational ClearQuest deployment by using Rational Team Concert in a complementary fashion. It provides a ClearQuest shop with a fast path to realize the value of Rational Team Concert.

It is implemented as a function of the ClearQuest Web and uses the ClearQuest OSCL REST API interface. ClearQuest is an OSLC Change Management(CM) provider and a consumer. It provides OSLC CM v1 and v2 interfaces, and also consumes OSLC CM services provided by other tools. ClearQuest OSCL REST API is also a desired interface if you want to integrate your own application to ClearQuest. Since it is HTTP-based, you can call it from any program that supports HTTP, and it does not require the ClearQuest client to be installed on the machine where you execute your application.

Through the same bridge integration technology, you can also integrate ClearQuest with other Rational tools, such as Rational Quality Manager (RQM), Rational Requirement Composer (RRC), and Rational DOORS, and with 3rd party tools, such as HPALM and Git.

Quick Tours

Configure Rational Team Concert and Rational ClearQuest Bridge: walks thorough the configuration process for setting up Rational ClearQuest and Rational Team Concert Bridge integration.

Use Rational Team Concert and Rational ClearQuest Bridge: demonstrates how Rational ClearQuest users can take advantage of Rational Team Concert. The tasks include linking between ClearQuest record and Rational Team Concert work item, using creation and selection dialogs, OSLC link rich hover, showing ClearQuest link from Agile Planning view, and displaying ClearQuest live data from Rational Team Concert Dashboard.

Getting Started

The deployment of the Rational ClearQuest Bridge is straightforward. As long as you have a working ClearQuest Web server, and your ClearQuest database has the OSLCLinks package applied and at least one record type enabled with it, you are ready to integrate ClearQuest with the Rational Team Concert through the bridge integration. The following infoCenter content provides step-by-step setup instructions:

• Configuring and using the Rational ClearQuest Bridge

Learn more

• Change Management Advanced for Jazz Team Server 4.0 entitlement for ClearQuest users
• Change Management Advanced for Jazz Team Server 3.0 entitlement for ClearQuest users
• Configuring and using Collaborative Lifecycle Management integrations
• Rational ClearQuest and Rational DOORS
• Using the ClearQuest and HP ALM integration
• Using the ClearQuest and JIRA integration
• ClearQuest OSLC 2.0 REST API: These ClearQuest REST APIs adhere to the OSLC Core 2.0 and Change Management 2.0 specifications
• ClearQuest OSLC 1.0 REST API: These ClearQuest REST APIs adhere to the OSLC Core 1.0 and Change Management specifications
• Extending Rational Team Concert by using OSLC services

Rational ClearQuest Synchronizer

The Rational ClearQuest Synchronizer is a data replication between Rational ClearQuest records and Rational Team Concert work items. It supports flexible bi-directional or one-directional synchronization between a Rational ClearQuest record and a Rational Team Concert work item. Changes in one application are applied to another using synchronization rules, which provide the mapping and transformation information.

It is primarily for the customers that want to incrementally adopt Rational Team Concert by having different teams use different tools. Some projects/teams (for instance, a development team) can choose to start using Rational Team Concert while other teams (for instance, a support team) continue to use ClearQuest. The teams using Rational Team Concert and the teams using ClearQuest have access to the same data (duplicated by the Synchronizer based on the configured sync rules). Reports can also be run in either system since the data is consolidated.

The ClearQuest Synchronizer is implemented as an application of the general Jazz item connector framework. It is a separate component of the Rational Team Concert offering, and requires setting up a Gateway service. It uses ClearQuest CM API interface to communicate with ClearQuest. It can also be used between Rational Qualify Manager (RQM) and ClearQuest.

Please note that there is a high maintenance and support cost associated with the Rational ClearQuest Synchronizer. Conflicts can occur when two users make nearly simultaneous changes to a ClearQuest record and its corresponding work item, and an administrator needs to constantly monitor these conflicts and resolve them manually by selecting the appropriate value. It is highly recommend that you evaluate the Rational ClearQuest Bridge integration before jumping into the Synchronizer integration.

Getting Started

It is important that an experienced administrator with knowledge on both Rational Team Concert and the Rational ClearQuest plans, designs and configures the synchronizer environment. Please read the Synchronizer information center contents.

• Configuring and using the Rational ClearQuest Synchronizer

Before you attempt to use the ClearQuest Synchronizer in your production environment, go through the ClearQuest Synchronizer tutorial.

• Get started with the Rational ClearQuest Synchronizer tutorial

Transition from ClearQuest Synchronizer to ClearQuest Bridge

If you deployed and used the ClearQuest Synchronizer, but later realized that the ClearQuest Bridge is a better fit, you can use the syncToBridge tool to migrate the synchronized Rational Team Concert work items and Rational ClearQuest change requests so that they use the ClearQuest Bridge and have OSLC links between them. Read the following information center topic about the tool and the process.

• Migrating from the ClearQuest Synchronizer to the ClearQuest Bridge

Rational ClearQuest Importer

The Rational ClearQuest Importer provides a one-way data migration from Rational ClearQuest records to Rational Team Concert work items. It imports ClearQuest records based on a user specified query, and uses a mapping file to declare how fields and values are mapped from a ClearQuest scheme to a Rational Team Concert process definition. It supports importing stateful record types, Users, Notes, Attachments, Work Item Relationships (duplicates, parent / child, blocks / depends on, and related), and creates missing objects, such as Contributors, categories, and iteration, on the fly.

The Rational ClearQuest Importer is primarily for the customers that want to move from using ClearQuest to Rational Team Concert as the change management system instead of maintaining both applications, and want to bring over certain ClearQuest records to Rational Team Concert.

It is implemented as a function in the Rational Team Concert eclipse client. It is based on the Bugzilla Importer, and uses the ClearQuest CM API to communicate to ClearQuest You must install ClearQuest client on the machine you run the ClearQuest Importer.

Quick Tour

Getting Started

It is important that an experienced administrator with knowledge on both the Rational Team Concert and the Rational ClearQuest performs plan, design and execution of the importing. The following page will help a Rational ClearQuest administrator to understand Rational Team Concert work items:

• Comparing concepts between ClearQuest and RTC

Reading the following information center contents is recommended before beginning the import.

• Migrating Rational ClearQuest records to work items

The following jazz.net articles also provide guides or step-by-step instructions on using the Rational ClearQuest Importer.

• Guide to migrating defects from Rational ClearQuest to Rational Team Concert
• Additional guidance and a workshop on importing ClearQuest records in to Rational Team Concert
• Guide for Importing Jazz Work Items from Bugzilla and Other Systems