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RTC 2.0 Planned New Function


Garrett Rolfs (83189) | asked Feb 10 '09, 5:38 p.m.
I have been exploring the newsgroup and jazz.net, but I still have
questions regarding what will be in RTC 2.0. So, I'm posting to gain
further insight.

Background:

We have a highly customized ClearQuest schema that makes extensive use
of hooks. We now have projects using RTC and RQM that need to share
defects with other projects that have not yet moved to RTC. The
developers and testers we serve have levied a requirement to create and
work with defects from RTC and RQM. It appears the CQ Connector meets
part of our needs, but creating defects in RTC and having them also
created in ClearQuest appears to be a challenge for the following reasons:

* Values for certain fields in ClearQuest are retrieved from an external
source. We need more than static enumerations. Is it or will it be
possible to specify a class that can create an enumeration dynamically?

* Interdependent fields. ClearQuest hooks used today create
interdependent fields. For example selecting a particular value in one
field dictates the values available for another field. We need to
duplicate this in RTC/RQM.

* Handling ClearQuest reference fields. The current schema contains
ClearQuest reference fields. If my understanding of what I have read
about the CQ Connector is correct, it's not possible today to create a
CQ reference from RTC. Is that correct? If so, will it be possible to
create a CQ reference in 2.0?

Finally, our goal is to support both the Web interface, for most users,
and the Eclipse client for our developers. If we extend the user
interface, will we have to implement the extensions for both the web and
Eclipse? Looking at the 2.0 UI information on jazz.net, I see a fair
amount of information talking about the web. I do not see much talking
about Eclipse (granted, I may have just overlooked it).

Thank you for any guidance you can provide.

-Garrett Rolfs

4 answers



permanent link
John Vasta (2.6k15) | answered Feb 11 '09, 2:31 p.m.
FORUM MODERATOR / JAZZ DEVELOPER
Hi Garrett,

Someone from the Work Items team will have to comment on the future of work item customization; I work on the CQ Connector.

I'm not sure I understand your question about CQ reference fields. What exactly do you mean by "create a CQ reference from RTC"? Can you give me an example of what you would like to do?

John
Jazz ClearQuest Connector Team

I have been exploring the newsgroup and jazz.net, but I still have
questions regarding what will be in RTC 2.0. So, I'm posting to gain
further insight.

Background:

We have a highly customized ClearQuest schema that makes extensive use
of hooks. We now have projects using RTC and RQM that need to share
defects with other projects that have not yet moved to RTC. The
developers and testers we serve have levied a requirement to create and
work with defects from RTC and RQM. It appears the CQ Connector meets
part of our needs, but creating defects in RTC and having them also
created in ClearQuest appears to be a challenge for the following reasons:

* Values for certain fields in ClearQuest are retrieved from an external
source. We need more than static enumerations. Is it or will it be
possible to specify a class that can create an enumeration dynamically?

* Interdependent fields. ClearQuest hooks used today create
interdependent fields. For example selecting a particular value in one
field dictates the values available for another field. We need to
duplicate this in RTC/RQM.

* Handling ClearQuest reference fields. The current schema contains
ClearQuest reference fields. If my understanding of what I have read
about the CQ Connector is correct, it's not possible today to create a
CQ reference from RTC. Is that correct? If so, will it be possible to
create a CQ reference in 2.0?

Finally, our goal is to support both the Web interface, for most users,
and the Eclipse client for our developers. If we extend the user
interface, will we have to implement the extensions for both the web and
Eclipse? Looking at the 2.0 UI information on jazz.net, I see a fair
amount of information talking about the web. I do not see much talking
about Eclipse (granted, I may have just overlooked it).

Thank you for any guidance you can provide.

-Garrett Rolfs

permanent link
Garrett Rolfs (83189) | answered Feb 19 '09, 6:08 p.m.
jrvasta wrote:
Hi Garrett,
Hi John.

Someone from the Work Items team will have to comment on the future of
work item customization; I work on the CQ Connector.


I wager the Work Items team is very busy, but anyone care to comment?

I'm not sure I understand your question about CQ reference fields.
What exactly do you mean by "create a CQ reference from
RTC"? Can you give me an example of what you would like to do?

I think I misread some information in the help concerning
synchronization rules. The example in the help is using a transformer
that is is for display purposes only. My initial take on that was
records in CQ with reference fields could only be synchronized into RTC.

What I would like to do is create a defect in RTC that will also be
created in ClearQuest. The defect records in our ClearQuest schema
contain reference fields. If an RTC user later modifies the value of
the RTC attribute that is mapped to the reference field, I would like
the changed value to be reflected in ClearQuest.

Hopefully this makes sense.

John
Jazz ClearQuest Connector Team


Thanks,

-Garrett

permanent link
Patrick Streule (4.9k21) | answered Feb 20 '09, 3:48 a.m.
JAZZ DEVELOPER
Work Item Customization aspects are captured in the Story:
https://jazz.net/jazz/resource/itemName/com.ibm.team.workitem.WorkItem/62528

You will find the information about the planned funtionality in the
story's child work items. I have included some references to the specific
features below.

* Values for certain fields in ClearQuest are retrieved from an external
source. We need more than static enumerations. Is it or will it be
possible to specify a class that can create an enumeration dynamically?

https://jazz.net/jazz/resource/itemName/com.ibm.team.workitem.WorkItem/63380

* Interdependent fields. ClearQuest hooks used today create
interdependent fields. For example selecting a particular value in one
field dictates the values available for another field. We need to
duplicate this in RTC/RQM.

https://jazz.net/jazz/resource/itemName/com.ibm.team.workitem.WorkItem/68050

Finally, our goal is to support both the Web interface, for most users,
and the Eclipse client for our developers. If we extend the user
interface, will we have to implement the extensions for both the web and
Eclipse? Looking at the 2.0 UI information on jazz.net, I see a fair
amount of information talking about the web. I do not see much talking
about Eclipse (granted, I may have just overlooked it).

Yes, if you extend the user interface with custom controls, you will need
to provide them both for the Web UI and the Eclipse UI.
Please see
https://jazz.net/wiki/bin/view/Main/ContributingAttributePresentations for
details.

--
Regards,
Patrick
Jazz Work Item Team

permanent link
John Vasta (2.6k15) | answered Feb 20 '09, 9:31 a.m.
FORUM MODERATOR / JAZZ DEVELOPER

What I would like to do is create a defect in RTC that will also be
created in ClearQuest. The defect records in our ClearQuest schema
contain reference fields. If an RTC user later modifies the value of
the RTC attribute that is mapped to the reference field, I would like
the changed value to be reflected in ClearQuest.


Yes, reference-valued CQ fields and work item attributes can be mapped to each other and bidirectionally synchronized. There is a caveat, however: in RTC 1.0.X, the number and types of reference-valued attributes for work items is fixed; you cannot define custom attributes that are reference-valued, like you can in CQ. So you would need to map your CQ reference fields to the existing attributes, such as Parent/Child, Related, or DuplicateOf.

The most common example of a reference-valued mapping is for the Owner attribute. The value of that attribute is a reference to a Contributor item, which represents a user identity within RTC. If your CQ record has an Owner field, it would be a reference to a CQ user record. You can map them to each other, so that a CQ reference to a user record with user id "garett" maps to a work item reference to a Contributor item with user id "garrett". If you change either side to reference a different user, then synchronization will attempt to apply that change to the other side as well.

In the synchronization rule mapping for a reference-valued attribute, you must specify the synchronization rule to use for the type of item or record being referenced. You'll find some discussion of this in the online help at

https://jazz.net/jazzdocs/topic/com.ibm.team.connector.cq.doc/topics/t_create_sync_rules.html

Look at the fourth paragraph of step 7, starting with "If a property value is a reference to another object...".

Also, in the sample synchronization rules we supply, there are several examples of reference-valued attributes that are synchronized (e.g. for work item categories and attachments).

John
RTC ClearQuest Connector Team

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