When you perform an update, Rational® Synergy uses a baseline as a starting point to look for new changes. You can also compare two baselines to see what changes were made relative to a particular build. If you use Rational Change, use baselines to generate change request reports.
Typically, a build manager creates a baseline. Developers do not create baselines because they do not make builds available to other users.
You might find it useful to create a baseline as soon as you perform a build. You can create a baseline and make it available to the test group without making it available to all developers. Making a test baseline when you build saves a representation of the build, in case you need later to create a fix for that particular build. Build managers typically create many baselines throughout a release. For information about how baselines relate to releases, see Working with releases.
Creating a baseline for each Integration Testing and System Testing build enables testers and developers to refer to the set of changes that were used to create the build. Typically, you create a baseline for all projects in the same release and purpose. For example, create a baseline for each Integration Testing build using all Integration Testing projects for that release.
Baselines also improve performance for update operations. An update that uses baselines only needs to analyze the tasks that were added since the last baseline, rather than all tasks for the entire release.