Why Your DOORS Next Report Builder Results Have Duplicates (And How To Fix It!)
In this IBM Engineering Tool Tip, Kevin explains Why Your DOORS Next Report Builder results have duplicate entries and how to fix them!
The Hidden DXL Menu
In this Engineering Tool Tip focused on IBM DOORS Classic, Kevin reveals a hidden menu for DXL code authors hidden deep within the bowels of DOORS.
Even with messed up camera settings Kevin comes through with another time saving tip!
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DOORS Next 7.0 is GA!
It’s taken a while, but today the wait is over. IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS Next 7.0 has been officially released!
As always, IBM has an overview of what’s new and noteworthy. But here are things we’d like to highlight as being significant.
Greatly improved performance
I hear that in some use cases, performance of the tool has gone up anywhere from 4x to 9x! Rumor is that Oracle DBs have shown the most improvements. This is reason alone to upgrade.
DNG has been renamed
It was not only DOORS Next Generation, but every tool has now been renamed. This was announced about a year ago by IBM. I’m still getting used to it, as are our clients. DOORS Next got the easiest adjustment.
Suspect Links Have Been Replaced With Link Validity
It’s no secret that IBM developers sometimes overcomplicate things. Suspect Links vs. Link Validity is one of those things. It took me a while to wrap my head around the concept.
Starting in 7.0, there is only Link Validity. I think this is a good thing overall and look forward to simplifying the explanation of things to my users.
This also corresponds to Link Validity being reportable in JRS! I worked really closely with IBM support to develop a report for one of my clients in 6.0.5, and it’s great to know that pain is now gone.
View columns are preserved when you switch to folders
In previous versions of the tool, you’d be in your folders view, and insert a few columns. Then you’d click a new folder, and you’d lose your columns. I worked with the DOORS Next developers on this and gave them feedback on how it should work. My feedback has been incorporated into the tool.
Yellow row highlight for new and copied artifacts cleared automatically
My users asked for this years ago, and now they have received.
Module and Collections pages no longer show the base artifacts folder
Chalk up another implementation that I’ve been asking for, for years. This is huge from a usability perspective.
Automatic type mapping for ReqIF imports
If you are involved in multiple imports/exports from ReqIF files, this should make things much smoother and less error prone.
Improved pages for empty collections and modules
Yet another one I’ll take some credit for — I’ve given DOORS Next developers feedback that it was not obvious to users how to paste an artifact into an empty module. It is now obvious.
ELM 7.0 – What’s New
IBM released Engineering Lifecycle Management 7.0 for general release today, and while we’ve covered Requirements Management with DOORS Next in some detail, we wanted to also cover highlights of the rest of the suite.
Engineering Lifecycle Management
Name Changes
All of the applications have had their names changed, for better or for worse. I think some of these are going to have a hard time sticking. That said, here are the new names across the board:
| Old Name | Old Acronym | New Name | New Acronymn |
| Rational or Collaborative Lifecycle Management or Continuous Engineering | CLM or CE | IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management | ELM |
| Rational DOORS | DOORS | DOORS Family | DOORS |
| Rational DOORS Next Generation | DNG | DOORS Next | DOORS Next |
| Rational Rhapsody | — | Rhapsody | — |
| Rational Rhapsody Design Manager | RDM | Rhapsody – Design Manger | RDM |
| Rational Rhapsody Model Manager | RMM | Rhapsody – Model Manager | RDM |
| Rational Quality Manager | RQM | Engineering Test Management | ETM |
| Rational Team Concert | RTC | Engineering Workflow Management | EWM |
| Rational Publishing Engine | RPE | Publishing | PUB |
| Rational Engineering Lifecycle Manager | RELM | Engineering Insights | ENI |
| Rational Method Composer | — | Method Composer | MEC |
The above is not the official IBM names to a T–I’ve slightly abbreviated some things. Keep that in mind.
New Look And Feel
The product banner looks much more modern.
Engineering Test Management
Clustering with Liberty Server
In theory this will improve performance. Please contact us or leave a comment below if you’re using this feature.
Improved Test Execution Performance
500 adapters running in parallel are supported! Pretty huge improvement there.
Mail Notifications
I actually developed a workaround for not having this years ago. It’s finally in the tool, fully supported!
LQE Manage Skipped Resources
You can ignore individual resources when LQE fails on a given artifact. Again, big improvement here.
Customize The “Related Information” Panels
I’ve never had a client ask for this, but I’m glad this is there.
Engineering Workflow Management
Improved Git Integration
- Command line script to make installation easier available for Node.js and Gitlab servers.
- Integration with Bitbucket server
- New process preconditions for Git Push operations
Duplicate a Change Set
This is interesting and I am not sure of why you would want to do this, but you can duplicate an active change set in Eclipse and Visual Studio.
Improved Look and Feel for Quick Planner and Program Board
The program board in particular looks fantastic! Of note, color tags are supported as well.
Publishing (Previously Rational Publishing Engine)
Unfortunately, there’s not much to report here as far as our interests. The improvements appear to have all gone to Document Builder and not to the Publishing thick client.
As an aside, it’s going to be very difficult for me to call it just “Publishing.” Really wish Publishing Engine had stuck instead.
Jazz Report Builder (JRS)
Custom Expressions Support Multiple Attributes
Previously, a report author could only create a custom column with a calculation on a single attribute. For instance, it was not possible to calculate a RPN for an FMEA-style report by creating a custom column that inspected both Likelihood and Occurence. You could only make a column that say, truncated Likelihood and that’s it. This was a *severe* limitation.
Enter version 7.0!
IBM Rational Jazz Collaborative Lifecycle Management 6.0.1 Released!
IBM just released the latest version of their Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM) suite, which includes DOORS Next Generation (DNG), Rational Team Concert (RTC) and Rational Quality Manager (RQM). This is a huge update and I think it lays the foundation for the future direction of the tool.
CLM 6.0 was marked by configuration management (CM) appearing for DNG and RQM, however there were limitations on opting-in to CM. Many of those limitations are now removed, and instead of focusing solely on CM, the developers of all the applications were able to focus on adding new features and refining existing ones.
I’m not kidding when I say the changelist is huge, so grab yourself some coffee and dig in for all of these new features, which are available right now from Jazz.net! Here are some of the new features and changes I find most notable.
DOORS Next Generation
- Link Validity – Instead of just monitoring for suspect links, users can be more active and tell the tool whether links are valid. I’m still wrapping my head around this concept and how it will be used, but I do think the theory behind it is sound. If users can mark a link as not valid before having a change process to review and remove it, then it could make it easier for owners on the other end of the link to understand that there are issues before they arrive.
- Link By Attribute – Makes it easy to create bulk links! I believe there will still be confusion due to the linking to a module/base artifact differences but people like me will know how to train the end users.
- Link Constraints – Makes it so that artifacts of one type can only link to certain other artifacts. This is another great thing to have and brings DNG further ahead of DOORS 9. The theory behind OSLC and Jazz is that you can link to anything at anytime, but this violates a core principle of requirements management. I’m glad the DNG team put the user experience ahead of the theoretical foundations of their toolset.
- Round Trip CSV – Another finally! We’ve been wanting this since 2012! I also like how it’s just integrated with the import requirement screen. Very nice, though as always there are limitations. A quick one I saw was the inability to change an artifact’s type via CSV. Makes sense on one level, but on another level, I can change an artifact’s type via the DNG GUI. But that’s just a nit-pick. This one change will make automations much easier to implement, and unlike DOORS 9, you can even delete requirements via CSV!
- Tie changes to RTC work items – The hooks to allowing DNG to completely manage change from RTC are finally here. Can’t wait to try this out! This will make it so that all changes to production requirements must go through a work item. The DOORS 9 to RTC integration has had this for a while and it’s great that DNG is now getting it too.
- Dashboard Widgets Are Now CM Aware – Better late than never. This is one of the reasons I advised my clients to hold off on implementing CM in their DNG 6.0 environments.
- Improved resolutions of CM delivery conflicts of Modules (Module Merge) – Yet another vital improvement.
- Version-aware Jazz Reporting Service – Again, the ability to report on DNG streams is a requirement, and another reason I suggestion people hold off before. Now I don’t have as much of a reason.
- Filter by Artifact ID! – I’ve needed this for so long.
- DOORS 9 to DNG Migration Package – It’s easier to get data from DOORS 9 to DNG, and this is great for testing all of the improvements made in DNG. There are still limitations in artifact mapping from DOORS 9 to DNG that people migrating ought to be aware of. Still, it’s nice to see significant improvement in this area as pure ReqIF alone had could have its own issues.
- Right-click for the action (pencil) Menu – You can hide the pencil column and do right-click only if you want, or you can have both. A much needed UX enhancement.
See more information about what’s new in DOORS Next Generation 6.0.1.
Rational Quality Manager
- Reconcile Requirements Progress Indicator – Now when users go to reconcile their requirements from DNG, they can see a progress bar. Great for large sets of requirements in test plans.
- Improved pasting of images in manual test scripts – This leads to better tool usability and better exports from RPE.
- Editable Environments in TCERs – Execution Records can now have their environments changed. I can’t think of a great use case for this but I’m sure it’s there because someone asked.
- Ability to specify that TCERs can’t be run in certain cases – can’t be run without being attached to a test plan, iteration, or environment. This is great for managers who want to enact good processes without having to control everything in the tool themselves.
- Some awesome new dashboard widgets – These are great!
- Link Validity is implemented in RQM as well!
- New artifacts available in Jazz Reporting Service – You can now report on Test Environment, Test Data, and Keywords. You can also see the category hierarchy in JRS.
- Table view filtering improvements – Really too many to list. One of my favorites is “show me which test cases don’t have test scripts”.
- RQM can import requirements from DNG Project Areas with CM enabled – Again, this is absolutely necessary before any companies that use both RQM and DNG can opt-in to CM.
See more information about what’s new in Rational Quality Manager 6.0.1.
Rational Team Concert
- My Stuff Menu Item – See all of your work items across all projects with a single click.
- Query by typing commands – These images do a good job of explaining:
I really like the -> notation for “Parent link”
- Bulk editing of Work Item fields in Quick Planner, My Stuff screens
- CM Linking from Work Items Is Now Available
- Local changes preserved when reloading an out of sync project – Anything that lets me preserve changes if I click the wrong thing is always fine with me!
- Online code review – I really like this one!
- New methods to set direction of flow targets – Users can do this from RTC, VS, and the command-line. In the GUIs, its done via the “Change Flow…” button. In the command line it’s done via the set flowtarget command.
- Restrict flows to components in a stream – Admins can set rules that component X must be delivered to by stream Y and only stream Y. Very useful!
- Custom attributes on more artifact types – file versions, baselines, snapshots, streams, and now components allow for custom attributes.
- Lots of git integration improvements
- Improved Jenkins plugin and authentication
- Build reports GUI improvements all over the place
- RTC 6.0.1 supports Microsoft Visual Studio 2015
- Delete multiple remote workspaces at once
- Pattern-based component search
- Work Item Auto Subscribe for Commenters
See more information about what’s new in Rational Team Concert 6.0.1.
Jazz Reporting Service
- Improved Add Calculated Column Dialog Boxes
- Time range support with drill-down when counting artifacts
- Dynamic filtering is made more prominent in the GUI
- Custom Graph Colors – FINALLY!
- Historical Trend Reporting for the Data Warehouse
- Set a goal line
See more information about what’s new in the Jazz Report Builder (JRS), Data Collection Component (DCC), and Lifecycle Query Editor (LQE) applications.
Jazz Foundation
- Online migration from one Jazz Server to Another – May make it easier to set up sandbox servers? I need to dive into this one.
- WebSphere Liberty replaces Apache Tomcat – I’m really not sure what to think about this one. The good news is that Tomcat is still supported and can still be used.
- Team Concert now supports integrated Windows Authentication
See more information about what’s new in the Jazz Team Server applicationJazz Team Server application..
DNG, RTC, and RQM 5.0.2 released!
IBM DOORS Next Generation, Rational Quality Manager, and Rational Team Concert 5.0.2 were just released.
You can read the release notes on Jazz.net. Notable in DNG are greatly enhanced file management and much needed updates to managing views.
The Jazz Reporting Service is also promoted to more of a public view, and my guess is that in 6.0 it will be fully baked in. It looks very promising.
Free Document Generation and Reporting Webinars
One of the coolest pieces of DOORS-related tech I saw at Innovate 2014 was Author XG by GEBS. GEBS developed the early versions of Rational Publishing Engine and really know their stuff when it comes to Document Generation and Reporting via DOORS. Author XG is basically RPE for non-technical people. Awesome stuff.
Learn About Document Generation
If you want to see Author XG and even learn more about RPE, GEBS is hosting a few FREE webinars over the coming months.
The first Webinar is Tuesday July 29th 2014
9:00 AM NA Eastern Time (UTC – 4)
9:00 AM NA Pacific Time (UTC – 7)
Do you want to know more about document generation? Are you curious to learn how automated publishing might benefit your organization? Then why not join us for our introductory tour of document generation technologies and discover the tools, methods and solutions that can enhance both your bottom line and delivery capability. (Note – this introductory webinar is industry/tool agnostic, and not specific to IBM Rational Publishing Engine).
The webinar will last approximately 1 hour with a question and answer session. Registration and attendance is free.
Presenter: Alex Feseto of GEBS
Learn about using IBM Rational Publishing Engine and other tools
This is the first webinar in an enlightenment series on document generation, below you can find the schedule for the next episodes:
Tuesday August 12th – Getting Started With Rational Publishing Engine – Register now
Thursday September 4th – Introducing Author XG: the future of document generation
September TBA – Introducing Reporting Central: the modular CMS for RPE and Author XG
October TBA – Advanced hints, tips & tricks for RPE and friends
October TBA – End to end document generation with RPE, Author XG, Reporting Central and Web Publisher
October TBA – Generating documents across the SDLC
So long, RRC! Welcome RDNG!
Anyone who has downloaded the milestone release of Rational Requirements Composer 5.0 may have noticed that in the help documentation, Rational Requirements Composer does not have its own help section. DOORS Next Generation, however, does.
When version 5.0 of the Jazz suite gets released in June, RRC will be no more. The name of Jazz’s requirements management tool will henceforth be Rational DOORS Next Generation.
I suspected this change coming for a while. As RRC gained modules, most places I’ve seen latched onto modules, even if they had never used DOORS 9. Having DOORS and RDNG still presents the “which tool should I use” problem to IBM, but at least IBM has narrowed the list down from three tools to two tools.
With the upcoming Requirements Configuration Management capabilities in RDNG (open beta starting around June and final release coming in Q4), I expect RDNG’s marketshare to grow exponentially, especially since existing DOORS 9 users can leverage their licenses for RDNG.
In the meantime, I can now speak about RDNG to everyone we do business, and that will lead to less confusion to my customers and even within IBM. June 1 can’t get here soon enough.
Free Private Source Code Hosting on JazzHub
From now until the end of 2013, registering on IBM’s JazzHub allows free hosting of source code for public and private projects.
This was just announced so I haven’t been able to dive in head first on this, but JazzHub seems to be an implementation of Rational Team Concert in the cloud that has been set up to import code from github, who also allows free project hosting for open source projects.
There is a small catch here. Your private projects are hosted at no cost to you until January 2015, where fees start to apply. At that time you can either migrate your projects elsewhere, convert them to open source, or decide to pay.
While we here at Baselines Incorporated have always been experts in requirements management, we learned Rational Team Concert when we saw that Jazz was the future platform for the Rational DOORS brand. While Rational Requirements Composer/DOORS Next Generation are not currently at feature parity with DOORS Classic, going towards Jazz allows for a much better backend architecture than the current DOORS Classic settings, which will eventually allow for things like true version control of requirements! (This will be the killer feature that solidifies DOORS Next Gen’s place in the market as the new requirements leader. You heard it here first.)
Git/Github is great for version control. Aside from a bit of a learning curve because of a new paradigm of source code control, I don’t personally have many complaints about it. It’s easy to use when you know how to use it. The simultaneous problem and benefit with git in my opinion is that other than the command line, there’s no standard client to use.
RTC allows use of a command line, explorer shell extensions in Windows, Visual Studio, and Eclipse. Eclipse has a fully configured RTC download and RTC is a plug-in on the Visual Studio side. There are git plugins for Eclipse too (I’m not sure about VS). But RTC was built with Eclipse in mind and so there is just one RTC plug-in for Eclipse.
In any case, if you’ve been wanting to try out RTC for some application ideas you’ve had, there’s really not a lot of reason not to try JazzHub right now.
Feel free to contact us for more information regarding DOORS, DOORS Next Generation, Rational Team Concert and Rational Quality Manager.
IBM Technote on Imported Word Table Captions
I wonder if my last post had anything to do with this.
How to remove “Table” caption prior extracting document in IBM Rational Publishing Engine
What a horrible title for this technote. The “Table” caption comes in as a HEADING, not a caption. And this problem only exists in exports from DOORS that were brought in from MS Word and that is also not mentioned. The word DOORS isn’t even in the title, which tells me that most RPE customers are using DOORS.
While the information in the technote is valuable, I still can find no actual reason any long time user of DOORS would want invisible table headers to have a heading of “Table” on tables exported to DOORS from Word documents. Unless every DOORS table will always have this heading regardless of where it is created, this “feature” needs to be removed in the next release.
