Version 7.2.0.1
© Copyright IBM Corp. 2000, 2009 All Rights Reserved.
Rational Method Composer 7.2.0.1 is a re-release of Rational Method Composer 7.2. The sole purpose of release 7.2.0.1 is to address a licensing defect which prevents Rational Method Composer 7.2 installation after December 31st, 2008.
This is a new release of IBM® Rational® Method Composer (RMC). New or enhanced features in this release are described below.
This release subsumes all previous software updates and iFixes. See Defects Fixed in this Release for more information.
Please refer
to the IBM Rational Method Composer Installation Guide for instructions
on how to install Rational Method Composer, upgrade libraries, and uninstall
the product. The installation guide (install.html) can be found
at [INSTALLDIR]/rmc/readme.
The following software must be installed before you install IBM Rational Method Composer:
The software installation includes two Rational Unified Process (RUP) configurations that were published using Rational Method Composer 7.2.0.1. They are available from the Start > Programs > IBM Rational > IBM Rational Unified Process 7.2.
Viewing the RUP for Large Projects website requires Java™ 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition, v 1.4.2 (J2RE) or J2SE™ Runtime Environment 5.0 (JRE 5.0). JRE 1.4.2 can be downloaded from this location: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html. JRE 5.0 can be downloaded from http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.html.
New features in Rational Method Composer 7.2 include the following:
This release of the Rational Method Composer tool is localized to the following languages:
Portions of the online help may not be translated for every language.
The Rational Unified Process (RUP) content is also translated to these languages, except Danish. The scope of the translation varies by language. For languages that were not completely translated you may see a mixture of the local language and English in the method library, in a localized published web site for that language.
The following languages have completely localized the content, with the exception of whitepapers, unless noted otherwise below:
The following plug-ins are no longer offered in Traditional Chinese translation:
During publication, Rational Method Composer automatically generates an index and glossary for the published site. However, for some countries these components may not be entirely correct. For example, incorrect letters may be used in the keyword index, and index or glossary entries may not be alphabetized correctly according to the standards of your locale.
Substituting the customized index and glossary for your locale is an effective work-around. All countries except Italy have provided customized indexes and glossaries. To use the customized index and glossary in your published site you must do the following:
[INSTALLDIR]\rmc\RUP.[language]\LargeProjects\index\navig.htm[INSTALLDIR]\rmc\RUP.[language]\LargeProjects\index\contents.htm[INSTALLDIR]\rmc\RUP.[language]\LargeProjects\process\glossary.htm[INSTALLDIR]\rmc\RUP.[language]\LargeProjects\process\glossary\navig.htmWhen users run Rational Method Composer 7.2.0.1 to open a library created in previous Rational Method Composer releases, the upgrade tool asks you whether to upgrade the library. The upgrade is not supported if the library is under configuration management control such as Rational ClearCase or CVS. The solution is to check out the library, copy it to a location, make all files writable, and remove any system files related to the configuration management system, then open the library to accept the upgrade question, and finally check in the 7.2.0.1 library back into the configuration management system.
For more information, see IBM Rational Method Composer Installation Guide for version 7.2.0.1.
When upgrading Rational Method Composer 7.2.0.1, if the update contains a RUP library, the RUP library on the existing install is overwritten. To circumvent this, back up your local library in the install directory before upgrading.
Warning: When you uninstall Rational Method Composer 7.2.0.1, the bundled library library.72, located under the install root is automatically deleted. If you have customized the library and want to preserve a copy, be sure to backup the library.72 file before uninstalling Rational Method Composer.
On LINUX and Vista systems, the bundled RUP library is installed under a read-only directory. When you first start Rational Method Composer 7.2.0.1, you are asked whether to copy the read-only library into another location. You are asked this only when the library being opened is that default library being opened. That is you will see this query the first time your start Rational Method Composer with a clean workspace.
There are several ways to upgrade libraries for use with this release. Each of these is described in this section.
If you use any plug-ins shipped with RMC 7.1.1:
Note: All of the plug-ins that ship with Rational Method Composer have been renamed. Therefore, we recommend that you create a new library in your configuration management system, rather than trying to upgrade your library 'in place'.
Follow these steps:
If you created your own library, and do not depend on any plug-ins shipped with Rational Method Composer 7.1.1:
Method 1 (recommended):
Method 2: Upgrade in-place
Some changes you may need to make to your library once it has been upgraded to Rational Method Composer 7.2.0.1:
Renaming plug-ins created with earlier versions of Rational Method Composer requires further manual renaming of some path names.
When renaming method plug-ins in libraries created using previous versions of Rational Method Composer, the contents in those plug-ins may contain the old plug-in names in some path names, such as node icons and shape icons. Those path names are not automatically corrected to use new plug-in names. You must manually fix them.
This problem does not occur for libraries created by Rational Method Composer 7.2.0.1.
Rational Method Composer 7.2.0.1 now will only create UML 2.0 activity diagrams. Previous versions would allow diagrams that have multiple inputs and multiple outputs (arrows) from a synch bar or decision node. Rational Method Composer will still publish such diagrams, but they are actually incorrect now. You should correct your diagrams to be valid for UML 2.0. Such diagrams can have either multiple inputs or multiple outputs from a synch bar or decision node, but not both.
Rational Method Composer 7.2.0.1 is based on Eclipse and therefore offers several accessibility features that are part of the Eclipse development platform, Rational Method Composer 7.2.0.1 provides CI162 Software and Web Accessibility for those with special needs to use software products successfully.
When running Window Eyes (a screen reader), you cannot type new characters in a text field of a Rational Method Composer published site that includes search capability. This is a Web browser limitation and not related to Rational Method Composer.
When browsing a published site that is deployed on an Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 for Windows Server 2003, you a warning message that says "error loading tree." In this case, the content view is display is blank because IIS cannot serve some published file. Follow these steps to correct the problem:
For each set of values, click New... to open the MIME Type window and create a new type.
When you browse a published configuration using Internet Explorer 7 or a Web application server such as Tomcat or IIS, you must add this site as a Trusted Site to meet IE7 security requirements. Otherwise, the navigation view and content view are not displayed correctly.
In Rational Method Composer 7.1.1, you check the Rational Method Composer library integrity by using Windows | Preferences… | Method Authoring | check Debug, then go to Help | Diagnosis and repair tools. In Rational Method Composer 7.2.0.1, you can right click on a plug-in, select Validate, and result problems are displayed in the problem view. Validation is designed to make a best effort to find all possible errors, but it is not guaranteed to find all errors.
Deleting a method plug-in may not delete the corresponding underlying file system folder for that method plug-in, if that folder happens to be the current directory or the parent of the current directory fro some applications. Users need to manually delete them if they want to create the same named method plug-in later.
Renaming plug-ins can corrupt the library if renaming is done when files are checked out from Rational ClearCase. This behavior occurs only when you are not on a LAN or are using a low speed connection. It is caused by a combination of checked out files in the folder to be renamed and information about paths of those files in the Rational ClearCase remote client view being out-of-synch Check in all files in the plugin folder before performing a rename operation.
When you select a particular process, Rational Method Composer publishes only the process in the process tab, but any other views in the configuration will still be published. The main reason is that Rational Method Composer is meant to publish a HTML site for users to reference, and the assumption is that you still need other tabs to make the whole sites as a whole site, but only include the selected process.
The workaround is to copy the configuration to create a new one, delete all the tabs you do not want, and publish it by selecting that process you want. Then, create a new custom category, and only assign the desired process into the custom category, and set that custom category as the only view for publishing.
There is a new option, Ignore and remove unresolved references, in the Specify import directory page of the Import method plugin wizard, and also in the Specify import file page of the Import XML wizard. If this option is selected, the import proceeds without checking the existence of required based plugins. References to the missing required based plugins are removed after the import.
Using the <div> tag in RTE contents may cause conflict for Dojo-based published sites. A <div style="FLOAT> tag in your RTE contents may conflict with the Rational Method Composer 7.2.0.1 new, Dojo-based published web site. A solution is to enclose this tag in another <div> tag as shown in the following example:
<div>
<div style="float:
left">
asdf
</div>
<div style="float
left">
asdf
</div>
</div>
Rational Method Composer 7.2.0.1 no longer enforces the to-one relationship between work products and domains. You can now assign one work product to multiple domains.
Some plug-in names have changed in this release to improve readability and provide an improved organizational structure.
| Old name | New name |
|---|---|
| base_concepts | core.base_concepts |
| formal_resources | extend.formal_resources |
| informal_resources | core.informal_resources |
| rup | core.base_rup |
rup_asq_test |
tech.asq_test |
rup_bm |
extend.bus_model |
rup_cots_package_delivery |
extend.cots |
rup_for_asset_based_development |
extend.rup_abd |
rup_j2ee_plug_in |
tech.j2ee |
rup_legacy_evol_plugin |
modernize.legacy_evol |
rup_rad_plugin |
tech.rad |
rup_rsa_plugin |
tech.rsa |
| rup_se | systems.rup_se |
rup_soa_plugin |
soa.rup_soma |
| rup_ux_modeling_plugin | extend.ux_model |
New this release |
extend_special_pub_views |
The following table explains the terms used plug-in package names.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| core | Used for plug-in core to the RUP software development process. Most RUP configurations should contain the core plug-ins |
| modernize | Enterprise modernization |
| extend | Extensions to the general RUP software development process that do not fall into the other packages. |
| SOA | Service-oriented architecture |
| sytems | Systems engineering |
| tech | Technology and tool-specific extensions |
Potential action required: Links to most elements are unaffected, because Rational Method Composer finds linked elements by their unique ID. However, any links to rup plug-in resource files (images and templates primarily) in third party plug-ins need to have their links corrected to use the new plug-in names, since such elements have no unique IDs.
The RUP banner used for publishing can be found in the RUP library at: core.base_rup\guidances\supportingmaterials\resources\rup_banner.jpg
RUP configurations are published with the following options:
| Field name | Value |
|---|---|
| Feedback URL (English) | mailto:rupfeed@us.ibm.com?subject="Feedback: <Configuration name> in RMC 7.2.0.1" <Configuration name> is either ‘Classic RUP for SOMA’ or ‘RUP for Small Projects’. |
| Feedback URL (localized versions) | mailto:rupfeed@us.ibm.com?subject="Feedback: <Configuration name> in RMC 7.2.0.1 - <language abbreviation>" <Configuration name> is either ‘Classic RUP for SOMA’ or ‘RUP for Small Projects’. |
| Glossary | Yes |
| Index | Yes |
| Banner image | Yes. Located in the library at core.base_rup\guidances\supportingmaterials\resources\rup_banner.jpg |
| Check external hyperlinks | No |
| Convert broken links in plain text |
No |
| Publish activity detail diagrams that have not been manually created | Yes |
| Publish activity diagrams for unmodified activity extensions | Yes |
| Show relationship sub-folder in navigation trees | No |
| Show task descriptors in navigation trees | Yes |
| Include method content in descriptor pages | Yes |
| Include links to related descriptors in role, task and work product pages | Yes |
A new plug-in, extend.special_pub_views, has been added. This plug-in is for specialized and alternative views for publication. It contains the view used by a new configuration, “Classic RUP for SOMA - for PDF or Word publishing”, the configuration recommended for publishing to Adobe PDF or Microsoft Word
Note
that configuration errors in the following configurations should be expected.
These are partial RUP configurations that focus only on aspects of the process
related to specific tools, and are not complete RUP configurations:
This situation can be avoided by performing a Team -> Refresh operation in the navigator view to set the correct source control state after a check-in is done and before creating the new elements.
firefox.js file by executing the following command:
find / -name firefox.js.firefox.js file.firefox.js file writable.firefox.js file with a text editor and change the
preference "dom.disable_window_status_change" from "true" to "false". For
example: pref("dom.disable_windows_status_change", false);<script> tags and the <script> tags
must be preceded by some other HTML code; otherwise, they will be removed.
Putting the <script> tags in a block such as <p>...</p> or <div>...</div> will also work.Rational Method Composer 7.2.0.1 supports two types of published web sites: those using the 7.1.1-method and the Dojo-based method introduced in this release. Each method requires a different about.htm file. Use templates from sub-directories in the install directory when creating your own about.htm files. For 7.1.1, the subdirectory is '"org.eclipse.epf.publishing/docroot/." For Dojo, the subdirectory is "com.ibm.rmc.publisher/docroot/." The about.htm file is used in the publication dialog.
When using a Dojo-based published site, customize the about.htm file as follows:
This option has not been documented in the online help. If the option is not selected, Extends variability works as described in the online help (see Rational Method Composer > Creating reusable method content > Method Content Variability). If the option is selected, new semantic rules for Extends are available as specified in OMG’s finalized SPEM 2.0 specification (Software and Systems Process Engineering Meta-Model) (see http://www.omg.org/issues/spem2-ftf.open.html#Issue11284 and http://www.omg.org/cgi-bin/doc?ptc/2007-08-07 for details).
The new Extends semantics works almost like the old extends, but differs in its effect on to-many relationships. Outgoing to-many relationships of the base element are only inherited to the extending element if the extending element does not define its own relationships. The old semantics would always inherit and the you could add your own relationships to the inherited list. With the new extends semantics, the extender always overrides the inherited relationships when it defines its own. New Extends semantics differ from regular Extends semantics in this way: For one-to-many associations, such as role to responsible work product, regular extends inherit and you can only add additional items. New extend semantics is like applying other-to-one and attribute. As soon as you add your own information, the inherited piece is overridden.
This option affects the behavior of the Tailoring perspective when loading additional processes into an existing Tailoring Session through the Add Method Elements or Processes to Available Elements context menu of the Available Elements view. When the option is selected (this is the recommended default), Rational Method Composer analyzes the added process and updates the Available Elements views with all method content elements referenced by the process. If the option is not selected, this is not done, and the process will not appear complete because process elements that reference elements not in the Available Elements view will not be presented in the process editor.
Known inconsistency issue between variability and the Include method content in descriptor pages publication option.
The option Include method content in descriptor pages can be found in the Publish Method Configuration Wizard and in the Method -> Publishing/Browsing Preferences page for the Browsing perspective. Use this option to publish HTML pages for descriptor elements in processes that combine textual content from the descriptor with content from the method content element that descriptor is based on. This content combination works in this way: it first takes all content that can be changed in a descriptor’s properties editor; such as name, brief description, relationships to other descriptors, or selections of steps for task descriptors; and then augments the page with additional content coming from the underlying method element.
When the underlying method content element has been manipulated in the method configuration used for publication utilizing variability (that is, as a contributor or replacement) after the descriptor has been created, the descriptor and the content element may not be synchronized, because the descriptor by design represents a snapshot in time and must be manually synchronized. As a result the content of the published page coming from the descriptor might contradict the content of the variability-manipulated content element. The workaround is to synchronize the descriptors against the method configuration that contains the variability elements before publishing the page (Right-click on Custom Synchronization… and select the configuration in the wizard).
When navigating from one page to another, click the Back button, the previous page is returned but not to the previous scroll location in that page. This is because there are two ways to return to a previous page. One is to retrieve the cached page and the other is to reload the page. By default, Rational Method Composer 7.2.0.1 has the bookmark feature enabled and reloads the page. You can change this with an app setting in the themes/appSetting.js file.
The Unsuppress Selected Element button works as designed. You can suppress an element with the Suppress tool bar button in the tailoring process editor and the Suppress in session view bar icon on Available Element view.
Workaround: Right-click Refresh in the Library view or reload the workspace library. A more efficient method is to delete method elements from the Rational Method Composer library view, and then go to the Eclipse navigator view to delete those corresponding Eclipse projects.
For top-level capability patterns, delivery processes, and tailoring process, all other documentation fields also appear on the process' description tab, and you must use that tab to make any change.
A capability pattern with any contributing activity under it is intended to be used as a building component for other capability patterns, and is not browsable.
When publishing a method configuration to the PDF format or Microsoft Word, Rational Method Composer 7.2.0.1 may fail with running out of memory error. If that happens, please exit Rational Method Composer 7.2.0.1, and then use these methods to resolve the issue.
Change the number 768 to 1024, or 1536, or even more (but do not exceed the amount of physical memory on your machine. Also, make sure your machine has large enough virtual memory configured, usually 1.5 x physical memory on your machine. Please check with your IT staff on how to do this.
Note that: you can use a combination of both methods 1 and 2 above.
Workaround: Double-click the selected note to select it, then click to select.
Workaround: Close all browser instances and close all Rational Method Composer editors that have RTEs.
Task descriptor pages will display the inherited, suppressed descriptors referenced by the task descriptor. That is, if any associated role descriptors or work product descriptors are suppressed, they are not displayed in their parent activity page because they are in a suppressed state, but on the task descriptor page, they are erroneously displayed.
Note that this limitation applies only to suppressed inherited descriptors. Those descriptors are included on he descriptor page even though they should not be. This limitation does not apply to other non-inherited elements. If the descriptor is not inherited from a base activity, then they it is not included on any page.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<projectDescription>
<name>new_name</name>
<comment></comment>
<projects>
</projects>
<buildSpec>
</buildSpec>
<natures>
<nature>com.ibm.rmc.library.persistence.distributed.project.MethodPluginProjectNature</nature>
</natures>
</projectDescription>
Rational Method Composer can be integrated with IBM® Rational ClearCase to provide version control to all resources in a method library. This integration is described in the On-line Help pages under the heading "Using version control."
ClearCase plug-ins can be added to Rational Method Composer, which will allow it to function in the following environments:
Consult your local ClearCase Administrator to determine the appropriate plug-in and configuration for your environment. Refer to the On-line Help for procedures for installing and configuring these plug-ins.
The following table lists significant defects that have been addressed in this release.
| APAR ID | Description |
|---|---|
| PK50100 | Could not resolve proxy 'uma://....' messages after creating or deleting CPs |
| PK48864 | Referenced tasks with conflicting variability |
| PK47502 | Deliverable parts fail to publish in work product descriptor |
| PK46841 | Path to method element changes after clicking the TD |
| PK46020 | Japanese font corruption in Activity Diagram |
| PK45300 | Impossible to have same presentation name in 1 DP |
| PK43455 | Images of the DP are not extended |
| PK42749 | WBS isn't visible when extending to a DP |
| PK42333 | Team Allocation tab in a CP become empty |
| PK41528 | Fields of a CP don’t seem to be updated |
| PK41091 | Support material guidances are not visible |
| PK40478 | Published Develop Components activity diagram is displayed incorrectly. However, the diagram displays correctly in Rational Method Composer |
| PK39283 | Import XML generates a 'null' error message |
| PK38662 | Unchecking Primary Performer from Custom Synchronization menu causes 'Open Activity Detail Diagram' to be grayed out |
| PK38258 | Authoring: Suppressed artifact still shows in ADD |
| PK38243 | Directory Not Found Error if Names for Capability pattern is in Japanese |
| PK38242 | URL with Japanese characters causes URL corruption |
| PK38163 | Search function hangs when downloading index.jar file. |
| PK37972 | Search Function (All the words) |
| PK35998 | On browsing certain links in a published web site, the published web site freezes |
| PK35885 | RMC: Cannot use target="_blank" with text copied from a Word document |
| PK35822 | RMC: Task does not appear in discipline in published site |
| PK35772 | RMC search function issue |
| PK34837 | RMC: Unable to print expanded details from preview tab |
| PK34703 | Inconsistencies within the "Work Product Usage" tab |
| PK34670 | RMC: Content is allowed to exceed 256 character limit |
| PK33543 | Words which have 'Umlauts' (Ä,Ö,Ü) appear at the end of the list |
| PK33110 | RMC: unable to set shape icons to images already present in preview field |
| PK26349 | RMC RUP content error |
The following table lists significant defects that were addressed in release 7.1.1.
| APAR ID | Description |
|---|---|
| PK36477 | Predecessor relationships among the work breakdown elements in processes were not preserved correctly when exported to Microsoft Project |
| PK34942 | Relationships between tasks and primary performer roles were not properly realized and published in some cases |
| PK35284 | Tasks from activity detailed diagrams saved in Rational Method Composer 7.0.1 were incorrectly reordered after migrating to 7.1 |
| PK35654 | Activity diagrams of processes or containing activities with localized foreign characters were missing from the published web site |
Legal notices for IBM Rational Method Composer are provided
in the file notices.html in the installation directory. Please
refer to this file for applicable legal notices.
Please contact your IBM representative or send email to rupfeed@us.ibm.com
© Copyright IBM Corp. 2000, 2009 All Rights Reserved