The Process Practice

Process engineering with the Eclipse Process Framework and Rational Method Composer

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Date: September 25th, 2007

RMC 7.2 released today

25 September, 2007 (19:08) | Rational Method Composer | By: Peter

IBM Rational Method Composer version 7.2 was finally released today. Go here to see the official announcement at the IBM website. Key themes for this release were

  • to provide more presentation options for processes by integrating RMC with the Eclipse BIRT reporting technology that allows publishing in any user-defined format and layout supporting amongst others compliance scenarios such as a simple ‘print the process for our auditor’
  • to increase the scalability of RMC in respect to distributed team support by providing workspaces that manage method plugins from many different sources and physical locations
  • to provide a simpler UI for project managers to tailor a process for projects
  • to provide new and improved integrations with process formalization and enactment environments such as IBM Rational Portfolio Manager and Websphere Business Modeler.

This is the biggest update for RMC since its initial release. We are adding these key new capabilities to RMC, which clearly distinguish it from the open source EPF Composer 1.2 (which was released last month and updated with a bug fix release 1.2.0.1 two weeks ago). I really like to thank all of my colleagues at IBM for their dedicated and passionate work to get this excellent release done and out in time.

Here a more detailed summary of all the numerous new features and key improvements (not a complete list):

  • Custom Publication and user-definable Reports with Eclipse BIRT
    • Publishing to document; alternative output formats include MS Word, PDF, and HTML
    • Create any kind of report on any information in an RMC method library
    • Powerful BIRT visual report designer (well documented, tutorials, and books available)
    • Easy to use for out-of-the-box with predefined report building blocks for RMC
      (33 report templates and 2 report libraries with altogether 43 data sets and 30 predefined tables)
  • Simplified Tailoring perspective for Project Managers
    • Specialized perspective in RMC for Project Managers hides many process modeling complexities
    • Provides simple and essential WBS-oriented analysis and editing operations
  • New modern and user-friendly look-and-feel for published Web sites
    • Newly designed modern and accessible UI for browsing
    • Pure Java Script implementation (DoJo); no more applets & frames required
      (backwards compatibility to 7.1.1 format still supported)
    • Deploy directly as WAR files to your JEE server
    • Alternative Search Engine support for web servers
    • Layout and style customization framework (skins)
    • Easy bookmarks and URL interchange
    • All pages show breadcrumbs
    • Show categorizations in content pages
    • Publish where roles, tasks, and work products are used in processes
    • Show tasks in Process breakdown in navigation tree
  • Distributed and organized Method Library Workspaces
    • Hierarchical and scalable organization of your method plugins
    • Method plugins in a library workspace can be distributed in many physical locations using many different source control systems
  • New diagram editor
    • Complete user-friendly reimplementation of diagram editors (Eclipse GMF)
    • Adds swimlanes, control flow labels, as well as free-form drawing and styles
    • Ability to save in gif, jpg, bmp, and other formats.
  • Improved integration with IBM® Rational® Portfolio Manager
    • Better support for iterative development: Merging RMC process changes into existing RPM project templates
    • Better support for governance:
      • Export of work product templates to project templates
      • Export of all role relationships to RPM: Primary, additional, and assisting roles
      • Export of RMC estimates to RPM project templates
    • Better scalability and bug fixes:
      • Every template can have its own base URL for published content
      • Import of predecessor dependencies / control flow into RPM
  • New Integration with IBM® Websphere® Business Modeler
    • Export Method Content and Processes to Websphere Business Modeler
    • Import Websphere Business Modeler business models into Rational Method Composer
  • Miscellaneous improvements
    • New ‘Extends and Replaces’ variability type
    • Element ordering in categories: order alphabetical, by type, or manually
    • Rich Text Editor improvements: Change font & size, paste plain text, paste from Word, add link/image in HTML view, HTML error markers and correction
    • Improvements for Configuration editor:
      • Fine-granular configuration of process by adding or removing categorized elements (e.g., add all elements categorized as CMMI Level 2)
      • Redesigned error and problem reporting UI for Method Configurations and Method Libraries
      • Highlight current view in configuration editor
      • Order configuration views
    • Process Editor Improvements
      • Activity indent/outdent
      • Suppress all tasks at any level
      • Allow multiple descriptors in same activity
      • Additional SCM support: Subversion
      • New platform support: Vista, IE7, Mozilla/FireFox 2, Eclipse 3.3

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