Software configuration management

You can use the IBM® Rational® Team Concert™ integration with HCL OneTest™ UI to maintain an auditable and repeatable history of your organization's test assets.

What is software configuration management?

Software configuration management is referred to as source control, change management, and version control.

Software configuration management systems are commonly used in software development groups in which several developers are concurrently working on a common set of files. If two developers change the same file, that file might be overwritten and critical code changes lost. Software configuration management systems are designed to avoid this inherent problem with sharing files in a multiuser environment.

Any software configuration management system creates a central repository to facilitate file sharing. Each file to be shared must be added to the central repository to create the first version of the file. After a file is part of the central repository, users can access and update it, creating new versions.

Benefits of software configuration management

If you have not used a software configuration management system or are not that familiar with the concept, you might wonder whether it is appropriate to use software configuration management on your project. Test automation is a software development effort. Every time a test script is created, whether through recording or coding, a file is generated that contains code. When created, developed, or edited, that code is a valuable test asset.

A team environment presents the risk of losing functioning code or breaking test scripts by overwriting files. A software configuration management system offers a way to overcome this risk. Every time a file changes, a new version is created and the original file is preserved.

For the team that is new to software configuration management, all of the essential features for versioning test scripts are available through the HCL OneTest™ UI interface. This integration simplifies the use and adoption of software configuration management.

Note: Use a software configuration management like or Rational Team Concert if multiple users must access functional test assets in a test team environment.

Software configuration management products

The IBM® Rational® Team Concert™ integration for versioning test assets is specialized and cannot be duplicated with other tools.

When you use HCL OneTest™ UI, the IBM® Rational® Team Concert™ operations appear to be very simple. But a lot is going on behind the scenes. A Functional Test script is a collection of files. The complexity of treating several files as a single entity is hidden because all actions in the product user interface are performed on the script. You do not see the related files anywhere in the user interface. In addition, some software configuration management operations, such as merging, are very complex. There is built-in logic to determine the order in which files are merged, and then different utilities are employed as needed to complete the merge.

Rational Team Concert:

You can use Jazz source control to manage source code, documents, and other artifacts that you want to place under version control and share with a team. Jazz source control is closely integrated with the other application development lifecycle tools included in Rational Team Concert.

  • You can create a project in your workspace, share the project to place the project under Jazz source control.
  • Check-in your changes to the repository workspace.
  • Deliver the changes to the stream from the repository workspace so that the changes are available to all members of the team.
  • You can accept a team invitation, or create a new repository workspace from one of the streams of the team.

Functional test assets

A typical HCL OneTest™ UI test script object includes these files:

  • Script file ( scriptname.java for HCL OneTest™ UI, Eclipse Integration, or scriptname.vb for HCL OneTest™ UI, Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Integration)

This file is created through recording.

  • Script helper file ( scriptname ScriptHelper.java for HCL OneTest UI, Java Scripting, or scriptname ScriptHelper.vb for HCL OneTest UI, VB.NET Scripting)

Each script has a script helper file that is generated after recording.

  • Shared test object map file ( kadov_tag{{<ignored>}}filename.rftmap kadov_tag{{</ignored>}}) or private test object map file (scriptname.rftxmap )

Each script has a map file. The map file can be associated with only one script (*. rftxmap ) or shared among many scripts (*. rftmap ). To prevent users from accidentally selecting a private map name as a shared map, the suffixes are different.

  • Verification Point file ( verificationpointname .rftvp )

Each script may also contain one or more verification point files. Verification point files are not shared among scripts.

  • Script Definition file (scriptname.rftdef )

Each script contains a script definition file. The script definition file contains the name of the map file, script name, the names of all of the recognized objects, and other file linkage information.

  • Public Test dataset ( filename.rftdp ) or Private Test dataset ( scriptname.rftxdp )

You can associate a public or private test dataset with a test script. You can associate a public test dataset with one or several test scripts.