OSLC CM Implementation Reports

Implementors of the OSLC CM specifications are encouraged to place feedback on their experience (good and bad). To add a report, simply copy and paste a section template and fill out any necessary information.

Rational ClearQuest

Contact information:

• Reported by SteveSpeicher
• This capability was implemented in Rational Team Concert (RTC) 2.0 as part of the ClearQuest? Bridge component.
  • This depends on Rational ClearQuest 7.1 server component only along with RTC 2.0 server.

Details about support:

• Specification version supported: OSLC CM 1.0
• Implemenation supported: service provider
• Detailed information: ClearQuest REST API
  
• Subset of specs supported and why:
  • prefill of submission dialog not supported, fix planned
  • exploratory support of "ChangeRequest" resource. CQ has a very flexible model and no transformation framework. We provided an experimental XSL backend that allows this to work
• Deviations from specs and why:
  • don't fully support oslc_cm:collref as spec'd: missed during testing, will fix in upcoming fixpack

Issues:

1. Consumers had issues with relative paths in service description document

Worked well:

• Consistent JSON/XML formats
• Consumers have found inlined properties to be very useful to limit the number of requests they need to make
• Service Discovery
• Delegated Web UIs work very well. Supporting the window.name IFrame protocol is tricky, but necessary for older browser support. Maybe we need a consumable Javascript library (that doesn't require Dojo) which hides some of the messy details from OSLC consumers.
• Sample application showing the integration early on worked well

Tasktop ClearQuest Connector

Contact information:

• Reported by RobertElves
• For more information contact info@tasktopNOSPAM.com

Details about support:

• Specification version supported: OSLC CM 1.0
• Implemenation supported: consumer of ClearQuest? OSLC api
• ...

Issues:

1. Need ServiceDescriptor? to contain additional element describing the request path for a change request given its identifier. This could eliminate problems when the repository location changes domains. I.e. if the domain changes, clients only need to update info from the service descriptor without need to update stale data in cached change requests themselves.
2. Need clarification on rdf:about vs rdf:resource attribute usage in ChangeRequest? (which is correct?)
3. Example response documents for a Simple Query would be useful

Worked well:

• Service discovery to easily guide user through repository selection
• Service discovery of available services for programatic access
• OSLC simple query support
• ...

Rational Team Concert (RTC) 2.0

Contact information:

• Reported by AndreWeinand
• This capability was implemented in Rational Team Concert (RTC) 2.0 as part of the Work Item component.

Details about support:

• Specification version supported: OSLC CM 1.0
• Implemenation supported: service provider
• Detailed information: Resource Oriented Work Item API 2.0

Issues:

1. ATOM format for result sets questionable. It is expensive to generate because it requires additional information that is not automatically part of the result set (and in most cases is not needed by clients anyway). Most of our clients clearly prefer the simple xml and json formats.

Worked well:

• Selective and inlined properties: you can get exactly what you need.
• Support for simple to use JSON format.

Rational Quality Manager (RQM) 2.0

Contact information:

• Reported by GoshenPan
• This capability was implemented in Rational Quality Manager (RQM) 2.0 to integrate with any compliant service providers as change management system.

Details about support:

• Specification version supported: OSLC CM 1.0
• Implemenation supported: consumer

Issues:

1. No recommended or suggested specification for establishing back link

Worked well:

• <TBD>

OSLC-CM V1 demo server in PHP (oslcv1-demo-server-php)

Well, this is not yet a real OSLC-CM server, as it's only a protoype and lacks many features, but we hope it could be covering the whole of OSLC-CM V1 some day (when its 1.0 version will be released).

Still, it may help test client tools. More details at : https://picoforge.int-evry.fr/cgi-bin/twiki/view/Oslc/Web

Sorry, not following the template, as it's not really a real implementation so far. -- OlivierBerger - 02 Dec 2009

Add-on for Mantis 1.2

Contact information:

• Implemented by Institut TELECOM as part of Helios project (OlivierBerger)
• This capability is being implemented in order to address Mantis request for evolution 0011063: Support OSLC-CM API to ease integration with ALM platforms to offer a REST interface for Mantis.

Details about support:

• Target Specification version to be supported: OSLC CM 1.0
• Implemenation supported: provider

Issues:

1. Not yet complete OSLC-CM V1 : work in progress

Worked well:

• <TBD>

Rational Change

Contact information:

• Implemented by JayGillibrand
• SamLee

Details about support:

• Target Specification version to be supported: OSLC CM 1.0
• Implemenation supported: provider

Issues:

1. So many namespaces!
2. So many ways to get a URL (rdf:about, oslc_cm:resource, atom links).
3. Unlike a more traditional, procedural API, it's hard to know what OSLC even does from the spec, which is about REST style resources more than operations. A quick high-level summary of all the supported operations (ad-hoc query, modify CR, etc.) and pointers to the relevant details in the spec could make it faster to understand
4. Multiple return formats (JSON, XML) were easy enough to implement, but make for somewhat tedious testing. I can see how both formats are useful to different consumers though. Not a big deal.
5. No standard test suite means I don't really know if my implementation is "done" or correct. I essentially used RQM as a client as the de facto test suite, though it doesn't provide complete coverage of everything in OSLC. This was my biggest issue.
6. URLs seem awfully fragile since they capture the hostname and port of the Change server at the time the request was made. Customers often upgrade and rename hardware, meaning any URLs stored in, say, RQM will go rancid on us.
7. Lots of missing stuff (obviously): getting a list of possible properties, required properties, handling attachments, etc.

Worked well:

• Basic-auth made for an easy authentication scheme.
• Atom doesn't seem like a very convenient wrapper format, but it's nice that IE and Firefox both know how to display. It's easier to debug a query that way or explain OSLC to someone when there's something a little more tangible to see than just XML.
• OSLC happened to map pretty closely to how Change already works. Coincidence or an artifact of careful planning and a relatively small set of operations in 1.0?

<Implementor> (copy and update template)

Contact information:

• Reported by...
• This capability was implemented in...

Details about support:

• Specification version supported: OSLC CM 1.0
• Implemenation supported: <consumer and/or service provider>
• Subset of specs supported and why:
  • ...
• Deviations from specs and why:
  • ...

Issues:

1. <issues>

Worked well:

• <good things>