IBM Buys Rational Software 309
An anonymous reader writes "Rational Software is going to be taken over by IBM. More info on Rational's website. RIP Rational. This is what rational is sending it's customers:
To our valued customers:
We are delighted to tell you that IBM and Rational Software have announced a definitive agreement for IBM to purchase Rational. This is a very exciting time for both companies and builds on the extensive business relationship IBM and Rational have had for over 20 years. Most importantly, it will provide significant benefits to you." Other readers submit links to the story in InformationWeek and the Mercury News.
Rational is a powerfull tool (Score:3, Insightful)
IBM saved Rational, really (Score:5, Informative)
Re:IBM saved Rational, really (Score:2)
They bought the company for the technology. Nothing else. Not the payroll. They are lying to you because it is in their interests to keep you working hard until they are ready to close the office.
Buyouts always lead to layoffs.
Open Source? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Open Source? (Score:5, Funny)
I'll think about it.
-IBM
Re:Open Source? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't work for IBM, but I can tell you what they will say: "We like Linux because it saves us money we would otherwise have had to spend on writing software which means we can make more money selling hardware, and after all, we are mostly a hardware company. We also sell a set of software engineering tools [ibm.com], and we'll probably integrate Rational's tools with that. Why would we give something away that competes directly with a revenue-generating product of our own?"
Re:Open Source? (Score:2, Informative)
Not even hardly. IBM is mostly a services company (over half of IBM's employees and about half of their revenue hail from the services division). Over the last year, IBM has sold off a lot of its hardware lines, including -- most recently -- its hard drives.
We also sell a set of software engineering tools
That they do. However, you linked to VAGenerator, a product that is being sunsetted. What they DO produce is the Open Source-based (i.e. Eclipse [eclipse.org]-based) WebSphere Studio Application Developer [ibm.com].
we'll probably integrate Rational's tools with that
You betcha -- but a lot of it has already been done. WSAD already integrates with ClearCase. Rational also has a product called Rational XDE [rational.com] that already gives somewhat-Rose-like integration into WSAD.
Their "loyalty" to Open Source? (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of coming up with weird 'royalty' reasons, come up with good business reasons for IBM to open source this product.
Hey, I'd love if they do that, and you could argue that there could be some benefits financially to IBM. However, from IBM's perspective, I don't see this is a great move, or something you do right off you buy a company.
Their loyalty to Open Source stops at the desktop (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Their loyalty to Open Source stops at the deskt (Score:2, Insightful)
- My guess is that we'll see WSAD incorporating Rational Rose as a view in WSAD. This will make WSAD an incredibly complete tool. It's only viable competitor in the marketplace for J2EE development will be TogetherJ.
One mistake they made though: SWT!!? - they should have based SWT on gtk instead of motif..
- My guess is that they'll have to rework this within 3 years. They could have done it right from the start but maybe they're just waiting for Sun to implement the java/gtk part (why pay for it when someone else is doing it for free?)
The only occasion when desktop is "verboten" is when selling workstations and laptops. This is not a result of free choice - this is the result of the dominating position of Microsoft. This problem should be rectified through the courts since it is clearly an effect of Microsofts illegal leveraging of its dominant position.
Re:Their loyalty to Open Source stops at the deskt (Score:2)
Re:Their loyalty to Open Source stops at the deskt (Score:2)
Re:Their "loyalty" to Open Source? (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. What some people here don't seem to understand is that IBM is not "loyal" to OSS, they are loyal to profit (it's called a business). They use OSS software in certain solutions because it saves them money. They essentially get to profit off of the backs of OSS programmers who code for free. IBM doesn't buy into the RMS BS, or any of the FSF BS. They are a business in a capitalistic country. Why does this philisophical BS come up every time a company chooses OSS - especially an American company who used to be a monopoly?
Re:Open Source? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why don't you open your home as a homeless shelter if you want to show how charity works. IBM is a for profit corporation putting money into the the pockets of stock holders and thousands of world wide employees. What have you done this week?
Re:Open Source? (Score:5, Informative)
Note also that IBM sells a high-end, "supported" version of Eclipse called WebSphere Studio Workbench [ibm.com]. This is aimed squarely at the big-bucks* enterprise software development market, the same folks who buy Rational Rose. There's huge money to be made in that market, and IBM wants it.
(*Freudian slip: I originally typed "big bugs".-)
Re:Open Source? (Score:3, Informative)
I've used both, and I much prefer VisualAge. The IDE is bound to the JVM (bad), but the environment allows you to work in an object-oriented way; I can pull out a class and work with it. I can pull out a method and look at that. In Eclipse, everything is file-based; to work with a method, the IDE just scrolls to the right place in the text file
Also, the VisualAge debugger was 1000X better than Eclipse. Try step-through debugging with both. Try dropping to a selected frame in the execution stack rather than restarting your app from the beginning.
Just wanted to clarify that Ecipse isn't really the next iteration of VisualAge; it's a replacement product which is getting better every release.
Re:Open Source? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Open Source? (Score:2)
Hopefully, they'll say "no". UML is a disease on the face of the planet, and the sooner it's destroyed, the better. Open sourcing Rose will potentially prolong UML's lifespan, something that I *really* don't want to happen. So like I said, I hope IBM keep it closed source (not that they have any incentive to open source it in the first place). Yeah, you might think this is flamebait, but it's genuinely what I believe...
Re:Open Source? (Score:2)
Re:Open Source? (Score:2)
I can see where unregenerate C programmers who wouldn't know OOP if it bit them might dislike UML. Heck, even I think some UML diagram types are a bit hokey. But what, specifically, is your beef?
You want DFDs and STDs or just plain old flowcharts?
Re:Open Source? (Score:2)
Re:Open Source? (Score:2)
Are there any other decent entries out there?
Re:Open Source? (Score:2)
They could also bring the disastrous unix GUI to parity with windows.
Re:Open Source? (Score:2)
Re:Open Source? (Score:2)
Hmm. Have you tried ArgoUML [tigris.org]?
Other than that, do you really find UML diagrams useful beyond sketches on a white board?
Re:Open Source? (Score:2)
What, ArgoUML's [tigris.org] BSD license isn't free enough for you?
IBM Charity? Please no! (Very Long) (Score:3, Interesting)
A history of blunders:
I worked at a shop that several years ago decided to go the "Client/Server" route to save money over the old mainframe methods. As far as they were concerned "Client/Server" mean "lets buy a bunch of PCs and play games on them during lunch". The application was a secondary consideration. This was a worldwide highly distributed application. Being a government organization, they had tons of money to spend though, so the reasons for switching had more to do with what the top people were reading in PC/Week and such than any concern about the money involved. The Clipper code was a disaster, with data constantly being lost for no apparent reason. The mainframe/mini approach consisting of a few hundred minicomputers was replaced with several thousand PCs, in reality the hardware costs went up. This all happened during a time when you had to replace all your PCs every year or two to still be able to even run the latest version of Windows and Office.
On top of this the number of people involved in the process soared, network bandwidth had to increase substantially, not to cope with the application, but with the increased size of prettily formatted Word documents that were flying around. In fact when the network folk decided to project future traffic, they ignored the application altogether (since there wasn't a design from which they could work anyway) and simply did a statistical analysis of e-mail traffic. As dumb as this seemed at the time, the results actually worked pretty well.
About the time the Clipper programs were fully deployed, Powersoft came along claiming to be best buddies with Microsoft. The company President even visited and told us that they and Microsoft were going to work together to make Powerbuilder the ultimate programming language of the future. The folks I worked for bought this BS hook, line, and sinker. The crappy Clipper programs were replaced (over a several year period) with crappy Powerbuilder programs who's design specs looked something like: "Make it look like the old minicomputer programs we had before". In other words, nobody really understood the original programs and didn't want to do the homework to figure them out either.
Realizing this last fact to some extent, the organization bought into another product called System Engineer (I forget the vendors name). SE was a high level design tool that claimed to actually be able to generate full-blown applications if given sufficiently detailed design specs. The only catch was that it only generated C++ or Cobol, and generating Powerbuilder was a "future feature". Just as well, because none of the programmers involved had the skill or patience to use the product, so they just did their database diagrams with a bootleg copy of Erwin. When pressed to do so they would run Systems Engineer in "reverse engineering" mode to produce the "artifact" documents needed to demonstrate what a great idea this client/server stuff was after all.
It was no surprise at all to me that about a year ago they asked someone (not me) for advice about where to go with this technology. Whoever did the research must have spent about 2 hours reading the trade rags before calling the sales reps to start convincing them that Rational was the "next big thing". In addition to the software being expensive, you almost have to agree to sign up for training in order to use the product. The training is VERY expensive, and with the bloated development staff that we had, this was made even worse.
The good news is that they have finally realized they went down the wrong path with Powerbuilder. They at least in that process got their data into a real RDBMS (Oracle).
The bad news is that they have decided to pick between Java and
In about 4-5 years they will start the process all over again. And, by the way the mainframe is still there, doing the hard parts of the application, cleaning up the messes that the PCs have made, with large parts of it written in *sigh* COBOL.
Your tax dollars at work again.
Back in the 80's IBM failed to understand a very important concept: That whatever gadget or technology finds its way onto peoples desks at home will eventually find its way into solving business problems too. Whether it works or not will be decided so far in the future that nobody will get blamed or lose their job for not really thinking things through.
I think IBM has learned its lesson though. They have their fingers in hundreds of pies, some of which are strategic, others seemingly nonsensical. They are positioned to make money both in hardware sales and consulting services whenever an organization gets so wrapped up in whiz-bang technologies that they can't extricate themselves. They have all the tools at their disposal to do mainframe/mini/or totally decentralized solutions and they are not dependent on any one vendor be it Oracle, Microsoft, Intel or even their own hardware divisions to come up with a solution that fits.
For some it may seem like technology has moved rapidly, but we are just now accomplishing things that were predicted as being right around the corner when I was in college in the 70's. I blame a lot of this on clever marketing by Microsoft, Intel and a few others (Powersoft, Rational among them) that substituted nicely packaged products (and games) for products that actually did something useful. I have high hopes that the Open Source movement will end this nonsense. A steady stream of products that "just work" and don't cost anything to try will keep the sales reps of the future a lot more honest than those of the past. I have more to say about this, but I guess this is too long already. IBM will conceivably Open Source parts of the product suit that are not particularly unique, but nothing they do is about charity, nor should it be. I hope that creating the Microsoft and Intel duopoly was the last act of charity that they engage in.
Rational and XML (Score:4, Interesting)
Can CMVC or TeamConnection return from the dead? (Score:5, Informative)
Now that Rational is being bought, IBM, can you make CMVC/Team Connection open source? God I would like to work again with CVMC...
Re:Can CMVC or TeamConnection return from the dead (Score:2, Interesting)
You, sir, are obviously a masochist of the highest order. :-) CMVC ranks as to most convoluted piece of bloatware I've ever been forced to use in a Unix enviroment.
At my current workplace (IBM), a manadate from management that we migrate to CMVC from our home-grown set of SCCS scripts is causing nothing but pain. Every one of our developers would rather go to CVS.
Re:Can CMVC or TeamConnection return from the dead (Score:2)
CMVC did have benefits and flaws (Score:3, Insightful)
The biggest problem CMVC encounters is that developers are usually looking for a software versioning repository like RCS or SCCS. CMVC tackles not only software versioning, but defect/request tracking, and correlation of code deltas to defects.
If developers don't accept the benefits of that tracking, they'll never consider it to be anything but an irritant. If project management doesn't actually use the additional information to control the project development, then CMVC is a poor fit if the project just wants a source code repository.
I haven't set up a CVS server yet, but I keep my own code in an RCS repository. Everything I've read indicates that CVS is a means of publishing a read-only image of an RCS-managed project, and of accepting suggested code changes for review. CVS does not track defects/requests AFAIK, so if developers are used to working with CVS and RCS, they'll likely find CMVC frustrating as it requires them to coordinate an extra piece of information (the defect/request ids they are working on.)
I hope they don't gut it.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Grady Booch recently spoke at our company, and his enthusiasm was infectious! It is obvious that he and the other Rational Fellows have a pretty good vision of where UML and RUP should go, and it would be a real shame if that was lost.
Re:I hope they don't gut it.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Valgrind (Score:5, Informative)
Valgrind:
http://developer.kde.org/~sewardj/
Re:Valgrind (Score:2)
Re:Valgrind (Score:2)
Dave
Rational Rose (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't have all that much to add, except -- God, Rational Rose was one of the buggiest, worst-designed pieces of software I've ever used. The one time I had to use it I prayed that someone over there would buy a copy of Visio to learn how a diagramming tool SHOULD be designed.
I always found it hysterically ironic that a tool that was touted by its makers as the ultimate way to develop software demonstrated so poorly its own usefulness.
Maybe after buying it IBM will run it into the ground ala Lotus. We can only hope.
Re:Rational Rose (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, but can Visio generate C++ from your UML, let you modify the C++, then import it back into the UML editor with all your changes intact? It's called "round trip engineering" and if you aren't doing it, you wasted your money buying ROSE!
Re:Rational Rose (Score:5, Informative)
Rational just manages to mangle code going both ways.
Re:Rational Rose (Score:2)
Re:Togethersoft (Score:2)
Re:Togethersoft (Score:2)
Re:Rational Rose (Score:2)
There seems to be a lot of money to make in this market, and new and cool products pop up frequently. Microsoft won't just let the other guys have all the fun.
Re:Rational Rose (Score:2)
I'm not saying that they're necessarily intechangeable tools, only that Visio's user interface is soooo much better, not to mention infinitely more stable.
Re:Rational Rose (Score:2)
Yes, but can Visio generate C++ from your UML, let you modify the C++, then import it back into the UML editor with all your changes intact? It's called "round trip engineering" and if you aren't doing it, you wasted your money buying ROSE!
Yes, but Rational Rose doesn't really do round-trip engineering successfully. I have run into several situations where Rose 'forgets' to pull in certain classes, neglects to pull in the comments written in the code, and deletes the comments in the existing model.
Rose is supposed to be helpful with designing AND documenting. If it continually deletes your comments, it certainly is not helping with the documentation.
-D
Re:Rational Rose (Score:2)
Re:Rational Rose (Score:2)
Re:Rational Rose (Score:2)
There were so many bugs and "bleeding-edge" features in Rose that looked cool but that weren't usable because of bugs. Printing was the worst. I repeatedly tried to print diagrams on all kinds of printers with no success. Each diagram came out the size of a postage stamp at the top left corner of each sheet of paper. It also liked to print out tons of blank sheets with a "page m of n" footer at the bottom. If you need lots of scrap paper it's a great product. We joked that Rational and the paper industry were in cahoots together.
re: rose on unix (Score:2)
Now how crappy is the unix version? probably pretty crappy and heavy on the system requirements.
Good and Bad Points (Score:2, Interesting)
IBM could also do what our "friends" at Microsoft did to Visio and ruin a good piece of software with patented Microsoft bloat.
I can't help myself ... (Score:3, Funny)
Rational software quality (Score:5, Insightful)
1. They haven't used anything better like togethersoft or visio.
2. They are management and don't actually have to use it.
Rational and IBM should get along great. Neither company produces good software. But both companies produce incredible salespeople. Working for a large bank, I have a great deal of respect for these guys. How would you like to try selling IBM or rational products? As engineers we are usually too honest. I'd never get anywhere.
Rational sells a process. The process is great for business people because it produces visible artifacts. (Aptly named, as they don't get used and are only good in the archeological sense.)
Togethersoft (recently bought by Borland) has much better software but it is very expensive, and they don't have the quality salesforce IBM has.
So if you think that salespeople don't matter, think again. In this case, they can take a barely functional product and have it dominate that sector of industry. Even in the face of better products.
Re:Rational software quality (Score:2)
I don't have experience with visio, but I thought it was based on rational technology. Anyone out there who knows that?
Together is supurb to rational with respect to backwards engineering. You can much easier adapt your source code and together will put these changes back in the design.
Friends of mine used rational rose under windows and the stability is horrible. The rational rose version for linux is even worse: They use some kind of windows simulation environment instead of supporting native linux interfaces. This means you have to install a "windows" printer to print and more of these nonsense.
Re:Rational software quality (Score:2)
Re:Rational software quality (Score:2)
Re:Rational software quality (Score:2)
That was a very good illustration. And a very good advise: UML is good, Rational is good to learn UML, but once you know UML then the usage Rational will only make you development process worse.
First, what I don't like in Rational is very ugly UI, which has not been designed - it has been "rationally" evolved from prototypes (that's waht RUP is about, isn't it?). I think the term "usability" is unknown in Rational development team.
Second, Rational products are very badly integrated to work togethers.
Finally, I hate all those license servers and inability of Rational salespeople to help to install them.
Conclusion is to use Togethersoft - it doesn't pretend to automate all your thinking process. Instead, it helps you with your software development. And if you need really some serious analyse of requirements then do it with traditional knowledge management systems - at least you can do lots with rule-based verification .
Clearcase (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Network dependent. Since the code is on a 'mounted' drive, everything is slower. I have to go to the network for everything.
2. Integrates into Windows OS. If clearcase or the network has problems, I have to reboot.
3. Takes to long. The whole integration stream, delivery, etc. takes about 10 button pushes and a good minute of time.
4. Costs too much. CVS works better, and is free.
Advantages of Clearcase:
1. Has salespeople.
Clearcase performance depends on your network. (Score:5, Insightful)
1) My last job: an all-unix network, where all the vobservers and clients were Solaris/linux, with a network administrator who knew what he was doing. The performance was excellent and clearcase really made a difference to the teams productivity. It was certainly better than CVS, which it replaced. Actually, comparing clearcase to CVS is like comparing Matlab to a 5-dollar pocket calculator.
2) My current job, where the vobserver is on Solaris, but all the clients are Win2000, with a drooling windows monkey for a network administrator. While the clearcase GUI on windows is excellent and much better than the unix equivalent, its performance is infinitely worse, with the performance of a view degrading in proportion to the amount of time the windows machine on which the view was created has been left turned on. Finally, we instituted a policy that all win2K machines have to be rebooted every monday morning.
It would be aweseome if IBM would make rational release a linux/unix GUI that is comparable to their windows version.
Magnus.
Re:Clearcase (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Network dependent. Since the code is on a 'mounted' drive, everything is slower. I have to go to the network for everything.
That's only if you place the code base on the network. In addition, Clearcase allows you to have several base code repositories (VOBs) replicated on a network, then synchronizes them automatically. This would limit or eliminate the problem you mentioned above.
2. Integrates into Windows OS. If clearcase or the network has problems, I have to reboot.
Network problems are network problems. They have nothing to do with Clearcase. That's like saying, "CVS sucks cause when I can't telnet to the server, it doesn't try to compensate".
Clearcase does not integrate into Windows like, say, IE.
3. Takes to long. The whole integration stream, delivery, etc. takes about 10 button pushes and a good minute of time.
This is vague. **What** takes too long? Checking out/in files? Triggers? Creating a release version?
I have been using Clearcase on both Windows and Unix for several years now, and the only thing which takes any appreciable amount of time is configuring views, branches, etc. At that, it still only takes a few minutes, and is done once.
4. Costs too much. CVS works better, and is free.
It's definitely expensive. CVS, however, does not work better. In fact, CVS is much more limited in capabililty than Clearcase.
CVS does work well, and is the right tool for many applications and development teams. However, if the project becomes large, distributed, or has many different builds and releases, Clearcase would work better in the long run.
Advantages of Clearcase:
1. Has salespeople.
How about this:
Advantages of Clearcase:
1. Works seemlessly on both Unix and Windows.
2. GUI for both Unix and Windows.
3. Can take advantage of distributed code base development.
4. Built-in triggering system for file check-ins and check-outs. This allows you to build scripts and such to do things when you check out/in a file or set of files.
6. Smart 'make' routine which can take advantage of compiled object files in other people's views.
7. Graphic 'diff' programs to view the differences between files and versions of files.
8. Ability to create branches from the code base for program maintentance, and bug fixing of releases, etc.
9. Graphic 'merge' programs which aid merging files between different views, or files from different branches.
Those are a few advantages...
Clearcase is a very nice tool. It was originally created by another company, whose name escapes me at the moment, then later purchased by Rational.
Now, Rational Rose, on the other hand, has it's fare share of problems...
-D
Re:Clearcase (Score:2)
The company that originally developed ClearCase was called Pure Atria. That's why clearcase installs itself in
*opinion*
Clearcase is powerful, byzantine, expensive, and slow. ClearCase linux support is quite limited, and its mvfs (multi-versioned file system. It's how they do dynamic views) is the only reason I use binary-only kernel modules. For this I resent Rational. I hope IBM will see the light and release the kernel module as free software so I can run ClearCase with a stock kernel.
Do your organization a favor. Don't develop a dependency on ClearCase. It will hold you back. Consider using CVS for lightweight stuff, or go with one of the commercial alternatives like BitKeeper or Perforce.
Re:Clearcase (Score:2, Informative)
Had to rreply to this one... (Score:2)
1. Works seemlessly on both Unix and Windows.
Point for CVS then, which also works on OS X and just about any other platform...
2. GUI for both Unix and Windows.
Also a point for CVS, which has GUI's for more platforms (including Java GUI's). Also has Windows explorer integration that works better (as in faster) than ClearCase's dog-slow file integration.
3. Can take advantage of distributed code base development.
Point for ClearCase, though how many people really take advantage of this feature (we do not).
4. Built-in triggering system for file check-ins and check-outs. This allows you to build scripts and such to do things when you check out/in a file or set of files.
I think you can do that with CVS too.
6. Smart 'make' routine which can take advantage of compiled object files in other people's views.
Oh yeah, I'll bet a LOT of people really make use of that one.
7. Graphic 'diff' programs to view the differences between files and versions of files.
Now I am going to go all out and say that ClearCase has the suckiest diff routines and tools ever foisted on mankind. I have personally witnessed a number of terrible mistakes on the part of the automerge process, and the "Graphical Tool" used to merge is the worst merge tool I have ever seen. If you want a fancy graphical merge tool Araxis Merge is 100000000% better. If you don't mind a bit more manual procedure then ediff beats everything I've ever used. When we used CVS the automerges did not go wrong ONCE, and anything that needed a merge by hand we could just set the tool up to use Araxis (or anythign else) because it was not an "Integrated Tool".
8. Ability to create branches from the code base for program maintentance, and bug fixing of releases, etc.
Which pretty much defines source control in my mind, again I'd have to give a hand to CVS for much easier branching. I could quickly create branches in CVS whereas in ClearCase it is a Big Deal to create branches, and the SCM people don't like it one bit.
9. Graphic 'merge' programs which aid merging files between different views, or files from different branches.
I already covered my problems under the "diff" section, which is really the same thing.
The thing you forgot to mention that IS a real strength of ClearCase is that it also does directory versioning. However, I would frankly give up that benefit in an instant for the much easier usability of CVS.
There are very large open source projects (like emacs or Mozilla) that use CVS, prooving that large projects can and do work even with the limitations of CVS. We have a fairly large project at work (I think about 4000+ files) and ClearCase, to me, has no compelling reason to use it except when people at work force you to. I know that before we were forced to switch to ClearCase I was a part-time CVS admin that spent about two hours a week on CVS issues, whereas now we have a team of SCM people managing CVS and I spend about four hours a week personally dealing with SCM issues like bad merges - except now EVERYONE ON THE TEAM gets to spend that same four hours as they have merge issues of thier own to deal with.
Sure, with a team of dedicated admins who know what they are doing, perhaps ClearCase might be better. But how many companies really have that? And is it worthwhile when just about anyone can set up a CVS server almost without thought?
Re:Had to rreply to this one... (Score:4, Insightful)
>> 6. Smart 'make' routine which can take advantage of compiled object files in other people's views.
> Oh yeah, I'll bet a LOT of people really make use of that one.
Have you any idea how incredibly useful this feature is? For example: let us say a developer checked out a heavily used
But once he checks his stuff in, no other developer in his team will have to go through the compile, since clearcase winks in all the object files from the first developer's view!
Suffice to say that this is one of the biggest selling points of Clearcase to people who know about this feature.
Magnus.
Re:Had to rreply to this one... (Score:5, Insightful)
Point for ClearCase, though how many people really take advantage of this feature (we do not).
A large number of ClearCase installations use MultiSite. It works very well over unreliable networks (I currently use it with a VPN between the US and India) or with no network at all (before we set up the VPN, we did updates via sneakernetted CDs). It also aids in disaster recovery because you can physically destroy one site without affecting any of the others. Lastly, it makes backups dead easy to do.
4. Built-in triggering system for file check-ins and check-outs. This allows you to build scripts and such to do things when you check out/in a file or set of files.
I think you can do that with CVS too.
Almost any ClearCase operation can have preop and postop triggers attached to it. The last time I looked (about six months ago), there was a very limited set of CVS operations that could be triggered, and expanding that set was near the top of the to-do list.
6. Smart 'make' routine which can take advantage of compiled object files in other people's views.
Oh yeah, I'll bet a LOT of people really make use of that one.
In very large (>5 million LOC) projects, ClearCase's wink-in facility is essential. With something that big, you can't just work on your own little corner of things without regard to what the other 1000 developers are doing around you. You've got to be able to regression test the whole thing with your changes applied, and that means building the whole thing.
If your makefiles are written correctly, you get 100% wink-in of everything that doesn't have to be rebuilt as a result of your source changes. If your ClearCase environment is tuned correctly, you can wink in objects somewhere between one and two orders of magnitude faster than you can compile them from scratch, plus you don't have the overhead of initially extracting all the source from the repository.
(Yes, I know about Mozilla. I'm not saying you can't manage large projects using CVS or whatever, but ClearCase has capabilities that CVS could never emulate.)
If you weren't using clearmake and wink-ins on your project, then you were definitely wasting your money on ClearCase.
8. Ability to create branches from the code base for program maintentance, and bug fixing of releases, etc.
Which pretty much defines source control in my mind, again I'd have to give a hand to CVS for much easier branching. I could quickly create branches in CVS whereas in ClearCase it is a Big Deal to create branches, and the SCM people don't like it one bit.
Creating branches in ClearCase is as natural as breathing. All you need is a cohesive branch strategy that you apply across your whole source base, like "I want my version; if that's not available I want the version from the latest official build". The free-for-all "I want 1.1 of this, 2.3.4 of that 5.10.15 of the other" non-strategy will cripple ClearCase, but it will also cripple any SCM practice you try to wrap around CVS or any other tool.
You also forgot that ClearCase can provide build audit trails that are way more comprehensive and reliable than revision strings embedded in the source files. The speed with which that lets me diagnose build failures and related problems wins us back a good chunk of the cost of ClearCase in engineer time savings.
For that matter, the richer set of metadata types that ClearCase provides lets you use know why something happened the way it did far more easily than you could with plan version control.
I've done SCM with a variety of tools for about 13 years now, and without exception, everyone who complained about ClearCase either a) was not using the tool to its fullest, b) was mad because it didn't work exactly like Their Favorite Version Control System, c) didn't know the difference between version control and SCM, or d) was really complaining about having to have any process at all beyond just barfing out code.
There's a new crop of tools coming along that may knock ClearCase off its perch, and ClearCase is far from perfect, but as SCM tools go, it's still the king.
Re:Had to rreply to this one... (Score:2)
Now I am going to go all out and say that ClearCase has the suckiest diff routines and tools ever foisted on mankind. I have personally witnessed a number of terrible mistakes on the part of the automerge process, and the "Graphical Tool" used to merge is the worst merge tool I have ever seen.
I use CC now and I completely agree with you. The graphical merge tool is horrbile.
I use ClearCase mode in Xemacs and use the Emacs diff - it's much much better.
Re:Clearcase (Score:5, Informative)
- Try to do a rename on a file in CVS and retain the element history. ClearCase does this correctly without having to muck with the repository by hand.
- ClearCase at it's core has a real ACID database to do a better job of preventing data corruption. CVS does not, which can lead to problems - notice newer open source CM solutions (Subversion, BitKeeper, etc.) have followed suit.
Re:Clearcase (Score:2)
Re:Clearcase (Score:2)
I don't know of many places that are willing to spend the money on CC that are not network dependant. Where I work, before we moved to CC we used CVS with pserver. Even if I choose not to use pserver my home account is on a central server.
I really don't think many places can escape the network aspect regaurdless of the tool they use
2. Integrates into Windows OS. If clearcase or the network has problems, I have to reboot.
*cough* *cough* Use Solaris
3. Takes to long. The whole integration stream, delivery, etc. takes about 10 button pushes and a good minute of time.
I've only been using CC for a couple weeks now, but I've come to find that while I'm not completely sure of what I'm doing, CC usually does what I intend to do. When we were using CVS I was a whiz and knew what the underlying level was doing. CC has a bit more abstraction, at least with UCM, but it does things properly even when I'm not sure what that is.
On Demand Computing (Score:2)
Let's be grateful that IBM rescued Lotus... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure IBM's acquisition of Rational wlll be equally successful.
Re:Let's be grateful that IBM rescued Lotus... (Score:2)
Re:Let's be grateful that IBM rescued Lotus... (Score:2)
I seem to recall that in the early nineties someone at Lotus complained that they were thought of as a "one-product company." Well, I always felt that naming the executable "lotus.exe" (rather than, say, 123.exe) WAS sort of asking for it.
Not being a Notes user, I don't know what the name of the Notes
Irrational Rose? (Score:3, Interesting)
IBM must be planning to integrate the Rational process into a LOT of their products to justify this.
Re:Irrational Rose? (Score:2)
Wow.... Somebody on Slashdot used the word "loose" correctly. I had my mental filter on to s/loose/lose/g and your sentance didn't make any sense. There is still hope for slashdot.
Re:Irrational Rose? (Score:2, Informative)
http://biz.yahoo.com/fin/l/r/ratl.html [yahoo.com]
In this tech investment climate, combined with the large amount of cash on hand at Rational, it is pretty easy to see why IBM thought this was a reasonable investment. Take a look at the close to $1 billion RATL has in cash/short-term investments:
http://biz.yahoo.com/fin/l/r/ratl_qb.html [yahoo.com]
I'm sure they wished they could have closed the deal when RATL stock was around $5 instead of $10, but this is about the longer term in preparing IBM to dominate as infrastructure spending improves.
Re:Irrational Rose? (Score:2)
http://biz.yahoo.com/fin/l/r/ratl.html [yahoo.com]
Dumbass yourself. Rational also has $800 Million in debts and liabilities.
General rule of thumb is a company is worth about what it's next year revenues are expected to be. Or if it is losing money, it's book value.
The market valuation is pretty much in line with that.
IBM paid $2.1 billion for a money losing company with $600M market value, or $500 Million book value. They overpaid, period.
doesn't Rational now own Visual J--? (Score:4, Interesting)
From what I've heard, this purchase of Rational by IBM can only be good news since the Rational products need some major tuning.
I also wonder if this doesn't have anything to do with Borland purchasing TogetherSoft( and getting TogetherJ )?
LoB
"it will provide significant benefits to you"? (Score:2, Interesting)
Is it just me, or have more and more stories been taking on a decidedly 'advertisatory' (to coin a word) tone in the past year?
SlashDot did not used to be like this.
At least CNN.com and whatnot put 'ADVERTISEMENT' at the top of "stories that look like ads", and they put 'SPONSORED BY' by "stories that are sponsored by the very companies they cover". (Look at this gem of a screenshot [twu.net]). Shouldn't SlashDot do the same?
I might wish to politely suggest that, except in cases where anonymity is needed (e.g. when discussing something that could get someone sued, like DeCSS or something anti-MPAA or anti-RIAA), Anonymous Cowards should not be allowed to post stories.
When I read this story, the first thing I thought was that the poster was an employee for either IBM or Rational...
As opposed to... (Score:5, Funny)
I just see the meeting now...
BoardMember1: So we are going to purchase Rational software?
BoardMember2: Don't we always purchase rational software?
BoardMember1: No, we've never purchased Rational software, we've purchased other software before.
BoardMember3: Other software? What, we've been running on irrational software for years?
BoardMember1: No, no, no! The other software we buy isn't irrational, it's just not Rational software.
BoardMember2: Isn't non-rational software irrational?
BoardMember3: I think he's right Bob.
BoardMember1: Okay, okay whatever... We've always bought irrational software.. Now all those in favour of purchasing Rational Software say aye.
Everyone: Aye.
** Meeting Ends **
BoardMember3 to BoardMember2: We're going to have to talk with the older board members... No wonder we've had to much problem.. with all that irrations software we've bought.
*** thank you... thank you... I'll be here all night people. ***
Hey, it worked out great for Tivoli!! (Score:3, Insightful)
In two years, "Rational" will be little more than a second-level menu off some VisualAge product.
Purify (Score:2)
I've found Purify on Windows to be quite useful at tracking down memory violations and leaks, certainly much better than Visual C++'s debugger can. And it's also really easy to use.
The only other product I know of on Windows that does this is Parasoft' Insure++, and I'm under the impression that it's quite a bit more expensive.
OK so what does Rational do? (Score:2)
I tried to figure it out on their site... Data Modelling?? As in flowcharts? Or developing software in a very easy high-level language in an emulated environment to test its functionality? Call me naiive but I'm sure I'm not alone.
Yet Another Alternative to Rational... (Score:2, Informative)
They belong together... (Score:4, Funny)
Sounds like a good match to me.
Re:What do they do? (Score:5, Funny)
Google [google.com]
Re:Thank G-d!!! (Score:5, Informative)
By judging the one piece of software they make that I have used I can tell you that Rational was not a very good company. Hopefully IBM will fix them so another CS student need not suffer.
ROSE is one of those packages like say I-DEAS that is very frustrating if you don't already know how it works and what to use it for. It does a hell of a lot more than "draw UML diagrams" - if that's all you wanted to do, you should have been using Visio.
If you ever work on a project with a development team of a hundred or more OO developers, then you need what Rational's tools like ROSE have got, there's really nothing else that can manage projects that complex. Harsh as this may sound, if you're an undergraduate you really don't qualify to have an opinion on ROSE either way.
Re:Thank G-d!!! (Score:2, Informative)
I agree that you need tools *like* Rose, but you sure don't need Rose.
Let's see what I've seen it do:
* Ruin hours of manual diagram layout by rerouting all associations because I had the audacity to move *one* class. Undo? Sure. Moved my class right back. Didn't restore any other part of the layout though.
* Refuse to save any files unless the user had administrative privileges under Windows NT.
* Destroy an entire model (it refused to read back the file it saved) when I pasted some classes from a different model into a class diagram.
* Throw away all my source code when I used the "round-trip" functionality. Thanks, Rational. I guess I didn't really need those method bodies.
And those are only the onese I remember after a couple of years of repressing memories of using Rational Rose.
My *best* Rose memory was sending a bunch of licenses back with a message saying that we couldn't accept the license agreement (which said that Rational wouldn't guarantee that our $12k of software would actually *do* anything). Man, that was fun. We went out and bought stuff from TogetherSoft instead.
W/O Rational, All Development Will Cease. Right. (Score:2)
Yeah, you tell 'em. That young whippersnapper should shut up about real software development, and go back to his open source project (which, incidentally, has a development team of 100 or more, doesn't use Rational tools, and--mirable dictu--actually works.)
--Mike
Re:Thank G-d!!! (Score:2)
I don't think I need to have a few years of industry experience to have an opinion of software that doesn't work.
Re:Thank G-d!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
1) No affective undo; in fact there really is no undo or multilevel undue. This omission is stunning. Try undueing a deletion of several classes, the moving of classes: you can't. Try undueing changed relationships, you can't.
2) No ability for concurrent development. If one programmer is modifying a model, no others can do so at the same time because there is not merge tool. This serializes development, and what you find is that developers will start having to resort to tricks to allow them to work concurrently. Foremost among those is to not use rose.
3) You cannot express all the relationships that exist in your software using Rose. For instance, you cannot represent macros and standalone functions. ( At least in the C++ package I use; there is more than one C++ package for Rose - the other is the 'ANSI' package I believe.) This leads to model skew; where what you are representing in Rose is not complete and correct with respect to what your code is doing. This causes developers to always "check the code" and ignore the Rose model.
4) You cannot modify source directly and have Rose automatically regenerate the model relationships. I'm sure some would argue that this is a violation of the process for using rose; but what about when you introduce a third party library and start using it?
5) Rose relationships are based on UML. A detailed UML diagram is has hard to understand as source. It turns out that having sophisticated UML does not communicate the design of you software any better or more clearly then just relying on source code alone, or some tool such as doxygen - which is fee and won't suffer from the limitations and expenses of Rose.
6) Rose is windows bound product. If you are developing on other platform, you developers must have access to a windows box to enter in the Rose model information.
7) Rose will not format its code to meet your coding requirements: it wants code formatted its way. This means if you have an existing source base with comments in perhaps doxygen format, then you will have to rework all that to support or overcome what rose will introduce.
(Evaluation) People looking to use Rose for softare development should first define what the problem is that they are looking to solve with Rose. Then test Rose directly against that problem. For instance, if you are hoping that having a UML model of you software makes it easier to communicate its design, then ask your developers to read a detailed UML model, preferrably from a software project that they are unfamiliar with and that is as complicated as they will be working with when using Rose. When they are reading the UML, have them answer these questions: ( In asking these questions, do not allow access to the source. )
What is the overall architecture, organization, of the model?
What design patterns are being used?
What problem is being solved?
To add a feature ( do this with several different features ), what would you modify?
To modify existing functionality ( choose several ) how would you modify the software.
What disegn decisions have been made here?
What have the designers choosen to comprise or leave out?
The Rose tool should allow them to determine the answers quicker than if the developers where using another tool (doxygen) or just the source.
You then ask the developers to use Rose to add functionality to the software. Use it for real here; have multiple developers working independantly on different parts. See how Rose performs here, again putting it against something like doxygen or just realying on the source. Key here is using your configuration management tools (cvs or whatever) to manage the Rose model changes while the developers are working.
Now take into account the cost interms of dollars of the Rose license, the restrictions it incures on the organization of your code, the complexity in introduces into your development process, and the model skew difficulties it may introduce, the lack of features like undue, and other difficulties you encounter when using it and make your decision by comparing Rose to a tool like doxygen.
From my experience, Rose is a poor performere that does not justify its cost; and here the cost I'm talking about is the impact on your development process and productivity not just the liscenses.
Re:Thank G-d!!! (Score:2)
Now this is a proper review, not "ROSE is crap, because!" like the last one.
People looking to use Rose for softare development should first define what the problem is that they are looking to solve with Rose. Then test Rose directly against that problem.
You really should get a login, because that comment is +5 Insightful.
Re:Thank G-d!!! (Score:2)
OK. Name three.
Re:Also check the internal memo (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Does this affect the free software community? (Score:2)
I guess the lack of UML-documented free software projects is not due to it not being neccessary, but to the lack of free UML tools. ArgoUML [tigris.org] is quite a cool project, but unfortunatly it's a major PITA to actually draw models with it. Of course, there are several other UML tools at sourceforge, but, as usual, most of them are still unusable, and will always be.
Re:Does this affect the free software community? (Score:2)
That said, I don't use the latest version, so it might be better now.
Re:Does this affect the free software community? (Score:2)
Re:IBM (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Websphere/Eclipse to the front (Score:4, Insightful)
That, in the real world is a very useful feature and pro-geek as geeks tend to get knifed in the back for building what people say they want.
Re:The kraken awakes (Score:2)
Yes, but with a difference this time methinks.
By lowering the bars to competition, and insuring that some kind of competition is at least surviving, IBM is becoming poised to reap the advantages of a monopoly position without having to endure the flak. For big-bucks enterprise computing, IBM looks like a very safe long-term bet.