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Topic Title: Can DOORS baseline, branch, merge?
Topic Summary: Need to baseline, allow changes WHILE baseline is reviewed and modify baseline per findings
Created On: 7-Dec-2007 16:18
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 7-Dec-2007 16:18
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Todd Jackson

Posts: 1
Joined: 7-Dec-2007

I am familiar with other tools' versioning capabilities with regards to creating baselines, branching, and merging and would like to know if DOORS has similar functionality.

Here is what I'd like to do in DOORS:
1. Baseline my module (release as document to the community as v1.0a)
2. Continue to edit the module WHILE the community reviews v1.0
(The edits would focus on developing new sections NOT included
in v1.0a)
v1.1 v1.2 v1.3 ...
3. Receive findings from community concerning v1.0a.
4. Create a "branched" version from the baseline created in step 1. which
a. will include fixes per the findings.
b. NOT include new additionas from step 2
5 Baseline what was created in 4.
6. Release baseline from 5 to the community as v1.0b
7. Merge 5. in current state of 4
(Merge branch with trunch)
8. Continue maturing trunk and return to 1. when ready for next release.

Can I do this in DOORS?

How?

Thanks,

Todd
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 7-Dec-2007 20:10
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Scott Boisvert

Posts: 348
Joined: 14-Apr-2006

OOoooOOooOoo!!!

That would be great. Unfortunately DOORS doesn't do the who cvs/subversion thing. No branch and merge by default. Not to say you couldn't do something with DXL scripting, but it would be complicated. I'm working on something kinda of similar, but the baseline thing has me a little stumped right now.

I wish the createBaseline.inc wasn't encrypted cause I think I could get it to work in my situation. Right now I would make changes in a "trunk" or "base" module, using an attribute to differentiate between the different versions of the requirements. Then each version would have it's own baseline module (which is invisible to standard users), only the objects that apply to that version are copied into the baseline module, or modified and then the baseline module is baselined.

Kinda confusing and haven't worked out all the bugs yet, not to mention hard drive space needed for this, seeing we'll be basically duplicating the database by however many versions we have.......

hmmm...maybe archive the module and then restore it only when I need it??? Nah...That's alot of archiving and restoring and I'm not sure that would save much space.

-------------------------
Scott Boisvert
Engineering Tools Administrator
L-3 Communications - Avionics Systems
scott.boisvert@l-3com.com
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 10-Dec-2007 03:12
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Paul Miller

Posts: 376
Joined: 2-Oct-2002

For any Telelogic people reading this thread - DOORS really really really needs to have branch, merge and rebase functionality. There is a big demand for this in SW intensive development environments as they typically have highly incremental and concurrent lifecycles. I've found that trying to emulate such features via DXL and humanware just ends up in tears, bad tempers and reduced karma!

-------------------------
Paul Miller
Specification Practices Specialist,
EuroCyber,
Melbourne, Australia.
Mobile: +61 (0)418 135 103
Web Site: http://www.eurocyber.biz
E-mail: miller@eurocyber.biz">pmiller@eurocyber.biz
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 10-Dec-2007 03:58
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Pete Kowalski

Posts: 301
Joined: 7-Feb-2003

Paul,

Perhaps everyone that reads this thread should open a enhancement request? Let them hear the people!!

-------------------------
pete.kowalski(at)motorola.com
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 10-Dec-2007 04:09
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Paul Miller

Posts: 376
Joined: 2-Oct-2002

I raised an enhancement request on this matter a long time ago - possibly as far back at 2004-2005, have also been in the ear of Telelogic Australia who are very much aware of the local demand for such features - particularly from IT groups within the Financial sector. Such features would require a dramatic change in the DOORS DB architecture so I can't see it happening any time soon.

-------------------------
Paul Miller
Specification Practices Specialist,
EuroCyber,
Melbourne, Australia.
Mobile: +61 (0)418 135 103
Web Site: http://www.eurocyber.biz
E-mail: miller@eurocyber.biz">pmiller@eurocyber.biz
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 10-Dec-2007 09:52
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Tony Goodman

Posts: 1098
Joined: 12-Sep-2002

Integrate offer a DOORS add-on called KeyChange.
This allows you to manage multiple versions of the same module concurrently.
This is explained on their website here.

-------------------------
Tony Goodman
http://www.smartdxl.com
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 10-Dec-2007 12:46
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Andrew Tagg

Posts: 151
Joined: 26-Oct-2004

Hmm, I have a VERY limited version of this working, but it has taken a lot of time and tears.

The scenario is as follows:

In the Mainline branch, version 1 of the requirements are developed.
When ready for release, this branch is baselined, published and archived.

The archive is then restored as a secondary branch.

At this point, changes can be made in either the mainline branch, or the seconday branch.

Due to some tricks with triggers, all changes are auto linked to a 'change request', this is just a plain object in another module that acts as an anchor for links (also contains the 'name' of the CR in the object text).

As well as the auto link, every changed object contains the a pre- and post- entry in the history of the modified object, this is just the name of the CR with pre- and post- prefix, and is used to bracket the change for future isolation. (triggers again).

We now have an anchor point for links, which we can follow to find out which objects were changed for a particular CR. Once we follow the links, we can trawl the object history of the target object to pull out the pre and post object contents.

OK, that was the easy bit.

I then have a second tool that allows selection of a CR, a source branch, and a destination branch.

This tool follows links from the CR, and extracts the pre and post object contents. It then uses the pre change content, and serches the destination branch for the matching object, and if found updates the content to the post change scenario.

As you can imagine, this gets very tricky once we start thinking about table cells, OLE, recurring text etc.

At the moment, I get about a 60% hit rate, with unlocated changes being output to an error file for manual fix up.

Very much still a work in progress still, but it illustrates the hoops that need to be jumped through to get even close.

Would be interested if anyone has tried anything even remotely similar. My biggest issue is not retrieving the atomic changes that were made, but locating the equivalent target in the destination branch. Obviously, we cannot use something as simple as the absolute number, as these will quickly diverge, so need to text match.

Am intrigued to find out how the 'diff' algorithm works, must be better than my poor effort.

Enjoy.
Andrew.

-------------------------
Andrew Tagg
Thales Air Systems, Melbourne
Australia.
andrew.tagg@thalesatm.com
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 10-Dec-2007 15:10
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Scott Boisvert

Posts: 348
Joined: 14-Apr-2006

Originally posted by: Tony Goodman

Integrate offer a DOORS add-on called KeyChange.

This allows you to manage multiple versions of the same module concurrently.

This is explained on their website here.


Hey Tony,

I had put my supervisor in touch with Jeremy Dick and David Guy from Integrate a few months back. She informed me last Friday that Integrate has put KeyChange on the backburner for now and are no longer developing the product so they can focus on KeyTrace or KeyPAQ (I forget which). I believe she said David had e-mailed her.

Just an FYI, so I don't think you'll see a solution from them anytime soon.

-------------------------
Scott Boisvert
Engineering Tools Administrator
L-3 Communications - Avionics Systems
scott.boisvert@l-3com.com

Edited: 10-Dec-2007 at 15:15 by Scott Boisvert
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 10-Dec-2007 21:41
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Paul Miller

Posts: 376
Joined: 2-Oct-2002

With the greatest of respect for Jeremy Dick (DXL divinity!), the constraints of the current DOORS DB architecture can only mean that KeyChange would need to use a significant amount of smoke & mirrors to try and replicate functionality that is not native to the DOORS client and server in any way - this usually leads to robustness and compatability issues whenever a new version of DOORS is released. DOORS really requires a completely diferant DB architecture for this kind of stuff (something more akin to Telelogic's Synergy DB architecture).

IBM Rational and their Requisite Pro product are a good example of what happens when you try to use smoke and mirrors to make another product, in this case MSWord, do something that it's not architecturally designed to do. I'm not saying that it's a disaster area, but you have to walk on a lot of egg shells.

-------------------------
Paul Miller
Specification Practices Specialist,
EuroCyber,
Melbourne, Australia.
Mobile: +61 (0)418 135 103
Web Site: http://www.eurocyber.biz
E-mail: miller@eurocyber.biz">pmiller@eurocyber.biz
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