Software deployment best practices

Check out a Software Deployment best practice, and prevent system and deployment crashes that keep you up at night! Literally - stuck in the office trying to fix the 'deployment went wrong.'

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhiCmxGkS-E

New! Architecture Management and Construction v7.5 products are here!

And, blastoff!

Our new Architecture Management and construction v7.5 products are announced, http://www-01.ibm.com/software/rational/announce/amc/?S_TACT=105AGX23&S_CMP=HPHERO and will eGA 9/26

With so much exciting new capabilities, I am really excited to be the one to introduce the product. More than ever before, the solutions help you squash the learning curves associated with the 'latest and greatest' technologies, with numerous tools to help you us get started. Tutorials, demos and sample projects are just some ways you can quickly become an expert - not to mention the point and click tools within the tools like taking a Java class and turning it into a webservice. Not sure how to get started with web2.0, or want to incorporate it into your projects? Rational Application Developer for WebSphere Software has visual tools to help you. Heard about JEE 5? Interested in getting started with it and use it in your projects? Rational Software Architect for WebSphere (which includes Rational Application Developer) http://www-01.ibm.com/software/awdtools/swarchitect/websphere/ has the tools to help you build J EE 5 projects , most productively and with a higher level of abstraction through annotation support.

Well.. find out more all the exciting, new, modern features the tools introduce to help you in technologies dynamic world.!.

And, let me know about your projects! Are you thinking of using JEE 5? Have you already implemented in J EE 5? Are you building SOA apps? Web2.0? Have you played with the Rational Application Open Beta?https://www14.software.ibm.com/iwm/web/cc/earlyprograms/rational/RAD75OpenBeta/

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Where is Rational Rose?

Rational rose was a movie star of the 90s and early 2000s, but where is it now?
We explain: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/info/television/index.jsp?lang=en_us&cat=dtachoice&item=xml/R152888Y16852D59.xml

Rational Asset Manager v7.1 is LIVE!

Another version of Rational Asset Manager is released with very cool new capabilities including integrations with IBM Tivoli CCMDB for lifecyle managment and infrastructurally connecting development with operations.

In addition, new capabilities include support for CC UCM, batch file upload and other needed features.

Asset management is an essential part of any organizations, that enables organizations really get the most out of SOA, reuse intiatives and asset collaboration (facilitating designed framework use, patterns and other organizational IP).


For more information: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/awdtools/ram/

Agile development with Rational

Some of you may think, that Agile development and Rational doesn't go hand in hand. That could be further from the truth!
Agile development is not about no tools, it is about just the right amount of tools and process to help you become more Agile. And well, Rational has just the right tools for that.

Within Agile projects, some require modeling. Yes, modeling. I know you thought that if you are working on Agile projects, you don't need modeling. But that is just not so. I mean, how will you break down your work, how can map out your iterative approach and how will you ensure that the work merges seamlessly. 'Just enough modeling' is the right solution.
As an article on StickyMinds http://www.stickyminds.com/BetterSoftware/magazine.asp?fn=cifea points out "Despite what you may have heard, modeling is an important part of agile software development. Sadly, it doesn’t get a lot of attention, even though it’s a fundamental technique for scaling agile to meet the needs of the real-world situations in which project teams regularly find themselves. It pays to think before you act, and modeling enables you to think through the critical, high-level issues that other techniques struggle to address. " It does pay to think before you act... doesn't it? For more information on Rational Software Architect, you can check out: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/awdtools/architect/swarchitect/index.html

Agile projects also need to be organized in a different way than traditional workflow SDLC, because of the iterative nature of the project. Components and funtionality consistently need to be located, updated, and modified. You, agile teams, may find this helpful:
Smart Agile Development within Dispersed Teams https://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/iwm/web/preLogin.do?lang=en_US&source=dw-c-wcsdpr&S_PKG=050108


Oh, and lets not forget RTC! Rational Team Concert is all about Agile development.
http://blip.tv/file/970632

Managing Solution Architectures

Hey guys,

Sorry we haven't posted for a while, no excuses, just a fact that we'll have to make sure doesn't happen again!

Well, we on the architecture management side have a lot of fun going on. There is a really cool podcast in development, by our very own James Conallen, which I will certainly let you know about once it goes live, on Managing solution architectures. The fact is, most of us are not doing 'green field' development. We are working within the architectural constraints outlined for us, with software that is already running, and sometimes multiple versions of same software due to mergers and acquisitions. How do you manage such an architecture? What is the right architecture to take the solution into the 21st century. I know you heard about SOA, Agile, MDD - but which one is right for you? This podcast positions some facts that may help you decide the right solution and approach for you. Sounds interesting? .. stay tuned!

My new favorite quote

You software testers may really appreciate it!

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

IBM's RAD Tops Other IDEs in User Satisfaction Survey

Software developers ranked IBM's Rational Application Developer higher than Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) offered by Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe, and four others in the 2008 Evans Data Corp. IDE Users' Choice survey announced today and conducted in April of this year.

Find our more exciting information about RAD’s robust development environment and what John Andrews, president and CEO of Evans Data Corp, said about RAD on Excite Money & Investing.

Finally, enjoy the full IDE Users Choice survey by downloading the full report on the Evans Data Corp web site.

SOA Sandbox for Reuse

The SOA Sandbox for Reuse at developerWorks has just been updated to include Rational Asset Manager. I've been really impressed with the sandbox - it's a hosted environment where you can instantly access and play with the tools that make up IBM's SOA foundation. It loads very quickly and the performance is just as good as running the applications natively, except you don't have all the hassle of installing and configuring the tools yourself. The included cheat sheets guide you through sample SOA scenarios, but you can also just explore the environment on your own. Here's how you get to the RAM environment.

Go to the SOA Sandbox for reuse main page at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/soasandbox/reuse/. Once there, simply follow the prompts to start the online trial (you'll need an ibm.com ID to register). Once you've gone through the registration process, you'll be brought to the Trial Environment selection screen. If this is the first time you've worked with a hosted trial, you'll need to download the Citrix Metaframe presentation client (the link is on the page), then you can click on one of the available applications (below) - the RAM one is called "Governance of Reuse".

Once the application starts up (and it's very quick), it's just like using the native app. Follow the guidelines in the cheat sheet for a complete SOA scenario, or just explore for yourself. The cheat sheet is shown on the right in the image below.


So what are you waiting for? Go explore!

SOA Governance

There's a new article out this week from DevX, on SOA Governance, focusing on Rational Asset Manager and WebSphere Service Registry and Repository. From the abstract:

Your most valuable SOA assets are worthless if you and your team can't find, use, and manage them. Find out how IBM Rational Asset Manager and IBM WebSphere Service Registry and Repository's governance solution can help you maximize your SOA investment to meet your business needs.

You can find the rest of the article here.
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R-U Ready to Save the Day?

It's time to join the League of Extraordinary Software Developers at the IBM Rational Software Development Conference 2008, June 1-5, at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Hotel.

Yes, Rational User, look to the skies! The R-Signal is sweeping across the clouds with the challenge: R-U Ready to Save the Day?



We've also introduced the key 'Heroes' on Myspace.
You can type in the URLs below and engage with them via the emails provided below:

• Developer: myspace.com/rsdc2008_developer
  
• (email: rhero.phanindra@gmail.com )
• Architect: myspace.com/rsdc2008_architect
  
• (email: rhero.robert@gmail.com )
• Analyst: myspace.com/rsdc2008_analyst
  
• (email: rhero.iris@gmail.com )
• Tester: myspace.com/rsdc2008_tester
  
• (email: rhero.camille@gmail.com )
• Release Mgr: myspace.com/rsdc2008_releasemanager
  
• (email: rhero.gary@gmail.com )
• Project Mgr: myspace.com/rsdc2008_projectmanager
  
• (email: rhero.tim@gmail.com )

Murray Cantor on IT Governance

Network Computing India ran a two-page interview with Rational's Dr. Murray Cantor on the subject of IT governance. The Q&A captures Murray's opinions about the need for governance in the industry.

We've been focusing on governance a lot here on the Architecture Management team, but there's still lots of uncertainty about what is meant by IT Governance. Murray clears it up in the Q&A:

The first part is about looking at your IT organization and reasoning about the decision rights, authority so that you know that right people are making right decisions. Policies are a way of informing and constraining those decisions. They provide guidance around the decision process. The second part is about putting in place measurements and controls so that you know that the IT organization is delivering what it needs to deliver to be effective.

We're working on projects like Asset Manager to help with governance of IT assets, and you'll be seeing us add to the collaborative, analysis and accessibility aspects of the solutions over time. Right now, in fact, we're offering a rebate on Asset Manager and WebSphere Service Registry and Repository (WSRR) if you buy them together to help governance of your SOA assets.

Telelogic Acquisition gains EU approval

After many months of deliberations, IBM's acquisition of Telelogic was given the green light by the European Union yesterday. The news was widely reported across the globe. Some reports are linked here:

Infoworld: With the acquisition of Telelogic, IBM will become by far the largest vendor of two types of software development tools: software modelling and requirements management tools. Initially the Commission suspected that the combined strength of the two companies would skew competition in these market sectors, pushing up prices and shutting out competitors....
"The deal will not harm competition in Europe or in any part of Europe," the Commission said.

InformationWeek and, amazingly enough, PhysOrg.com also commented.

Welcome to the team, Telelogic!

Visit us at SD West next week!

SD West 2008 is next week, in Santa Clara CA. IBM is a platinum sponsor of the event, and Scott Ambler, Practice Leader of Rational's Agile Development business will be speaking at the conference on Agile Model Driven Development.

He also has another interesting talk scheduled - here's the abstract:

Sci-Fi 2008
Speaker: Scott Ambler (Practice Leader Agile Development, IBM)
Date/Time: Monday (March 3, 2008) 7:00pm — 8:30pm

Presentation Abstract
The 2007-2008 television and movie season has provided us with a bonanza of science fiction: Jericho, Battlestar Galactica, Bionic Woman, Torchwood, Dr. Who, Stargate Atlantis, Iron Man, Sarah Connor Chronicles, Star Trek XI … Let's get together and share our opinions about what is actually worth watching. If you like we can even discuss why none of the other captains hold a candle to James T. Kirk.

In my opinion - worth watching: Torchwood and Doctor Who. If you don't get BBC America - sign up for it now!

More importantly, Ken will also be at the show, bravely staffing the booth. I'm sure he'll be blogging the event too!

Happy Anniversary to Rational!

It's been five years this week since Rational was acquired by IBM, so we're celebrating!

Of course, Rational has been around a lot longer than that - originally, we were founded way back in 1981, when we built Ada compilers and the hardware to run them on (you can go to wikipedia for a brief overview of Rational's history). We've come a long way since then! Today,

• IBM Rational delivers the industry's most complete, open, standards-based software development environment that helps developers deliver more reliable and precise, error-free code.
• IBM Rational software is the clear leader in Application Development and Project Portfolio Management (as ranked by Gartner analysts for six consecutive years).
• IBM Rational software is used by nine of the Fortune Top 10 companies, 45 of the Fortune Top 50 companies, and 87 out of the top 100 companies.
• Since the acquisition, more than 28,000 customers have purchased Rational software development solutions.
• IBM Rational has a tremendous impact on IBM's middleware portfolio. There are more than 2,000 Rational software developers within IBM focused on helping customers govern the business process of software and systems delivery.

So, let's celebrate! There's a new podcast you can listen to in which Grady Booch, Lee Nackman and Walker Royce chat about the last five years, talk about what it has meant for each company and for the software profession in general. Refinement of Rational's focus, the expansion of IBM's software paradigm, the further embracing of open source and open standards, the investment in growing technical talent, and the Jazz platform are all discussed.

For more information, check out the special anniversary page.

The Facts of RAD

MyEclipse has issued a press release that mentions RAD, and may cause some confusion. Tim Francis,WebSphere Tools & RAD Chief Architect, helps set the facts straight.

First of all, the transition from WSAD to RAD was purely a naming one. WSAD was delivered prior to IBM's acquisition of Rational, and RAD 6.0 was simply the next version of "WSAD" released under the Rational brand. RAD is entitled as a free upgrade to all active WSAD customers; there is no new cost - describing the transition from WSAD to RAD as complex or costly is either uninformed, or intentionally misleading.

The RAD value proposition is it's ability to improve the productivity of developers across the entire development life cycle. Some examples:

• Some other products provide simplistic support of UML, that requires iterative generation of java code, followed by import actions to keep the diagrams and code in sync. This round trip engineering approach was available back in Rational Rose, and is a long way from state of the art now. RAD provides much more than that - for example, we provide UML visualization, which allows you to view, edit, and update Java code using UML views. There's no separate model to get out of sync; you're editing the live code, but in UML.
• All modern IDEs include support for database interaction and definition, but RAD has the benefit of working with the DB2 developers to provide exceptional support (for all major databases); RAD includes graphical views of your data topology, a SQL scrapbook, impact analysis tools, the ability to write user-defined functions (UDFs) & stored procedures, and phenomenal support for embedded SQLJ.
• RAD has in-depth support for application profiling, analysis & testing; you can execute, monitor, and trace the flow and performance of your application, right out of the box.

For additional information, please see Tim’s complete response on the WEbSphere Community Blog.

Get up close and personal to Asset Manager

Rational Asset Manager is coming to a city near you.

You can now sign up to attend a developerWorks Live! briefing on Asset Reuse with RAM and Rational Software Architect. The first locations are:

• El Segundo, California on March 4th
• Jacksonville, Florida on March 12th
• New York city on March 19th.

So there's got to be a location within a short 1000 mile drive from you (assuming you're in the US).
We've got both coasts covered at least! Stay tuned for more locations to come.

So, what are we showing?

Well, asset reuse is an essential strategy for companies looking to create innovative solutions to solve complex software development problems. Searching for, identifying, updating, using, and deploying software assets can be a difficult challenge. An effective reuse strategy allows you to:

• Harvest existing artifacts and build and share assets to mitigate costs and productivity concerns for analysis, development, and testing.
• Coordinate and control assets and intellectual property, determining what is shared, versioned, and visible for others to use.
• Understand the relationships between and impact of assets, such as the relationship between development time assets and the relationship to infrastructure assets.
• Govern assets across communities -- for example, one community describing needs and another community realizing needs and submitting solutions to repository.
• Govern service development and publishing into a service registry.
• Track assets effectively across an organization.

The briefing provides a high level overview of RAM and RSA - tools that can help you address the components of a successful reuse strategy. Discussions and demos introduce key software asset management definitions, challenges and solutions, including strategies and tools that can be leveraged for a successful project.

Sign up now!

Scott Ambler on Agile Development

It's a little known fact that Rational's tools are equally at home in an agile development process as well as other, more "heavyweight" process structures.

Now, IBM's Scott Ambler has written an article in Dr. Dobb's January newsletter on Agile development. The article focuses on best practices for governing development projects and highlights the eighteen practices of the Lean Development Governance Framework created by Ambler and IBM's Per Kroll.

It's an interesting read. You can find the article here: http://www.ddj.com/architect/205920564

Super Bowl XLII and IBM Rational!

This week, IBM will demonstrate current and future portal technologies at the Media Center during Super Bowl Week. IBM has collaborated with the NFL and other partners to build the NFL's new media portal, NFLMedia.com.

According to the press release, amongst other technologies:

IBM Rational software development and testing tools were used throughout the software development lifecycle. The league builds custom portlets with IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory and IBM Rational Application Developer for WebSphere Software, which pull information from a variety of internal sources to provide fresh content as it becomes available.

How cool is that! Not only can you watch the Super Bowl, you can also check out all kinds of stats and stories through the portal, safe in the knowledge that Rational technology was used to make sure it doesn't go down at the wrong moment (hopefully).

Go Giants!

Grady Booch is recognized internationally

Grady Booch, IBM Fellow, is recognized internationally for his innovative work on software architecture and software engineering. He is co-created of the Unified Modeling Language and his vision for collaborative development environments is forming the basis of IBM Rational's strategy for Jazz.

For more details, eWeek published an online slide show listing 25 of the most influential people at IBM. The diversity represented is a tribute to IBM as a globally integrated enterprise with a global talent pool.

Jazz now open to everyone!

Jazzed about the new year? Looking to get your hands on some cool Rational technology?

Well, now you can.

From the press release:

IBM is announcing it is opening up its development platform based on Web 2.0 technologies for developers to collaborate and contribute to software under development at www.Jazz.net. Jazz.net is an open, commercial community designed to help companies globally and transparently collaborate on the development of Jazz-based technology.

Previously only available to IBM customers, academics and partners, Jazz.net is now open to the greater software development community. IBM's vision for community-driven development expands the boundaries of how the open source community can impact global software development by not merely creating a vehicle for feedback after products have been developed, but enabling the global community to be a part of IBM's development process from start to finish.

So, hop on over to Jazz.net and sign up!

Asset Reuse Webcast!

Asset reuse is a key strategy for companies looking to create innovative solutions to solve complex software development problems. Searching for, identifying, updating, using and deploying software assets can be a difficult challenge.

Our new webcast on "Innovate don't duplicate! Asset reuse strategies for success" looks at strategies and tools that can be leveraged for a successful project, including Rational Asset Manager, Rational Software Architect and WebSphere Service Registry and Repository.

The webcast is scheduled for tomorrow, January 10th at 11am EST, so sign up while you have the chance. It'll also be available for replay.

Happy New Year!

From all of us here on the Architecture Management Marketing team. 2008 looks to be a great year, and we're all looking forward to bringing you lots of exciting new products, updates and information over the next few months!