Global Access to DOORS Requirements via ClearQuest

These days, organizations are increasingly mandated to have auditable, automated traceability which links requirements to development, change management, and testing.

However, globally distributed environments ("Global Development and Delivery", or GDD) are another prevalent trend. In a not-so-hypothetical situation, requirements are managed by a team in the United States. Development and testing may be performed elsewhere, sometimes in another city within the United States, but more often in an entirely different country.

If we examine the tools being used for the software development lifecycle, it's usually Telelogic DOORS or IBM Rational RequisitePro for requirements. Often IBM Rational ClearQuest is being used for change management. Mercury QuickTest Pro, Loadrunner, and Winrunner own the testing space.

For a distributed team to leverage requirements throughout the lifecycle, it needs to find a way to (a) allow distributed workers access to requirements, (b) allow teams to respond to changes in requirements, and (c) establish automated traces between requirements to other development artifacts: tests, defects, enhancement requests, etc.

Telelogic DOORS is hands-down the tool of choice for requirements management. It's a great tool for the task, but unfortunately it performs very poorly over the WAN. It doesn't have a great web interface. It doesn't have any sort of multi-site replication capabilities. In terms of training users, it can be a bit cryptic and hard to learn for new users or users who are generally used to working with Word documents for requirements. Lastly, it's extremely expensive -- prohibitively expensive for companies who have built globally distributed teams to save money on labor. These companies would save money on labor, but ultimately spend the difference and more on licensing.

Is Citrix the anwer? It seems to work fairly well for distributed teams who are just using Citrix for DOORS. However, Citrix costs money too. More importantly, tools which are running on a local desktop cannot integrate with tools being used through a remote desktop window.

Enter IBM Rational ClearQuest. It is fairly ubiquitous in organizations. It is extremely flexible and customizable. It has security contexts and such for controlling access to records. It has a decent web interface. As of Version 7.0, IBM has added free, built-in test management ("ClearQuest Test Management", or CQTM) capability. And... it has multi-site replication capabilities.

Ring-Zero Software ClearTrace for DOORS is absolutely the best way to tie everything together. One one level, it's a scaleable, bidirectional integration between IBM Rational ClearQuest and Telelogic DOORS. However, its value really becomes apparent when it is applied to the Global Development and Delivery paradigm. It leverages ClearQuest as a vehicle for distributing DOORS requirements to distributed teams, while also maintaining automated traceability between requirements and other artifacts. Users are actually interacting through ClearQuest, and interface they likely already know how to use. It doesn't require testers to install DOORS on their desktops or learn how to use DOORS. However, if they have DOORS installed locally, it leverages it as well. When ClearTrace for DOORS is combined with other Ring-Zero products, such as Test Adapter for Mercury QuickTest Pro or Test Adapter for WinRunner, it shines even more. These additional integrations allow users of Mercury's testing tools leverage DOORS requirements as well, and from the same familiar ClearQuest interface.

To learn more about these solutions, please visit Ring-Zero Software.

ClearQuest DOORS Integration

Aimed at IT shops using Telelogic DOORS for requirements management and IBM Rational ClearQuest for issue tracking, Ring-Zero Software has released an immensely useful integration between the two tools: ClearTrace for DOORS. Before ClearTrace, the integrations available were very weak: some were monstrosities which barely qualified as "integrations" (one can only assume they existed for sales opportunities which were contingent on satisfying a "checkbox"), while others were ultimately deemed unusable by many larger organizations.

Ring-Zero leveraged its many years of building bridges between DOORS and Rational Software tools, and has provided its customers with a high-quality integration which the industry was desperately in need of.

From the Ring-Zero web site:

ClearTrace is described as a system which integrates ClearQuest and DOORS together, rather than as a simple mechanism for creating links between the two, for two reasons: First, ClearTrace provides simple, native access to data from both DOORS and ClearQuest. When local clients for both are present, users can access cross-environment functionality. Second, ClearTrace has been designed to provide scaleable access to “real world” data volumes which may span multiple databases.

Visit Ring-Zero Software's website and read more about ClearTrace for DOORS:
http://www.ring-zero.com/cq-doors

Integration, Migration and Cross-Vendor Solutions

Two of the leading requirements management tools in today's market are Telelogic DOORS and IBM Rational RequisitePro. DOORS is widely used by government, defense, automotive, telecommunications and medical organizations. Often touted as a bulletproof database-centric tool, it is often the requirements management tool preferred by systems engineering teams within organizations. RequisitePro is widely used by many IBM/Rational customers, and it's document-centric approach to requirements often appeals to software engineering teams within organizations.

Rare is the organization that has completely standardized on one tool or the other. In many situations, different tools have been standardized on by groups or locations within large organizations. It is often the case that groups' or locations' requirements are dependent on one another, or some mechanism is needed to deliver requirements from one group to others and keep recipients updated if and when the initial requirements change.

Ring-Zero Software currently sells two different solutions that address these problems. The first solution is RD-Move: it provides as a way for RequisitePro users to migrate or periodically deliver their requirements to DOORS users. It uses RequisitePro's published API to extract RequisitePro requirements as XML (Extensible Markup Language), then uses DOORS' extensibility language (DXL) to migrate the requirements to DOORS or update requirements which have been previously migrated. By using standard means of accessing each side, the program is largely insulated from changes that each vendor might make to its software.

Because Ring-Zero uses XML as an interim format, the requirements extracted from RequisitePro can be compressed, encrypted, and thus safely transferred between even the most security-conscious organizations who have the need to interchange requirements. This means that if Organization X uses RequisitePro and Organization Y uses DOORS, X can provide its requirements to Y and keep Y updated of changes. X does not need to buy a single DOORS license, and Y does not need to buy a single RequisitePro license. RD-Move moves data types, traceability linkages between requirements, traces between requirements that reside within separate RequisitePro projects, handles requirement deletions, modifications and changes to the overall requirements hierarchy such as moved or reparented requirements.

Ring-Zero's second solution that addresses these problems is RD-Link: a Requisite-Pro centric integration between RequisitePro and DOORS. The integration leverages many of the same technologies for interchange, e.g. XML over HTTP or HTTPS along with separate encryption and compression between DOORS and RequisitePro. It provides a way for RequisitePro users to create links between their own requirements and ones stored in DOORS. The traces are easily reviewed in RequisitePro's traceability matrix. If DOORS requirements change, linked requirements are flagged as "suspect".

For more information on these two solutions, please contact or visit Ring-Zero Software.