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Issue:
March 7, 2005
Visible Spotlight
- CM Crossroads reviews Razor
Application Development
- New Review: Visible Developer
Application Lifecycle Management
- Polaris: New Features
Configuration Management
- LCSIS: Smart and Economical
- Razor: Sales/Training Promotions
- Razor: Updated Pricing
- Tech Tip
Puzzler...
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Visible Spotlight - Feature Story
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Comprehensive CM with Razor by Mike Gunderloy
Visible Systems' Razor provides a well-integrated trio
of cross-platform (Unix and Windows) configuration-management
tools:
- Issues is the problem tracking system
- Versions is the version control system
- Threads is the release management system
Two things distinguish Razor from some of its competition.
First, all three of these tools work closely together. It's
clear that they have grown up together, rather than having
been built as disparate pieces and then later lightly
integrated. Second, they're all quite flexible. If you don't
like the user interface in Issues, or the precise workflow
within the tool suite, Razor is meant to be modified, and
the manual shows you how.
Razor maintains its own databases as ASCII text files using
its own custom database server, which communicates with
the Razor clients (and with the Razor licensing server)
via TCP/IP. The user of plain text and standard Unix
utilities for management means that Razor is quite open
to both customization and integration; if you need to work
with issue data from an outside tool, for example, it's
right there in front of you.
Read the complete review of Razor:
http://www.cmcrossroads.com/article/40755
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Application Development
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"Visible Developer is designed to be
at the heart of a 3-tier application development process,
and it's very good at what it does...The code that's generated
works well and has the most extensive comments that I've
ever seen
from any such product." Mike Gunderloy, Developer Central
Click here to read the review:
http://www.adtmag.com/blogs/devcentral/blog.asp?id=10590
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Application Lifecycle Management
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Polaris: New Features
The latest version of Polaris
contains a number of new features including:
Metrics
How many issues were assigned to Steve this week?
What was the average amount of time an issue remained at
the QA state last month?
The answer to these any many
other questions can be determined using Metrics. This feature
allows you to gather statistics about issues in an almost
unlimited number of ways, using filters to determine which
set of issues are
included in the analysis. The results of the metrics generation
process are stored as an XML document and then formatted
using an XSL style sheet. If you wish to modify the way
the results are displayed, simply modify the XSL files to
meet your needs. See http://www.visiblesystemscorp.com/Products/Polaris/features.htm
for a sample.
Referrals
When dealing with complex issues, it is often necessary
to break up the issue into sub-issues. Polaris allows issues
to be linked together through the use of referrals. An issue
can be linked to any number of other issues, in any issue
set.
In addition to specifying which issues are connected, you
can also set the relationship type. There are two types
of relationships: parent-child and link. A parent-child
relationship implies a hierarchy, while a link does not.
If
issues are linked together in a parent-child relationship,
you can specify that the parent issue cannot be promoted
to an approved state, until all child issues have already
been promoted to that state.
Email Issue Submission
In addition to the standard interface for creating and monitoring
issues, Polaris can now be setup to allow users to submit
new issues and check the status of issues via email. This
allows customers and service personnel to enter new problems
from remote locations without requiring complete access
to Polaris. All that is required is an email client such
as Outlook that monitors a mailbox for incoming mail that
is formatted in a way that Polaris can
understand.
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Configuration Management
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Visible LCSIS: An Integral Part of Any
PLM Endeavor
LCSIS is a dynamic, Enterprise Data Management
System that is designed, from the ground up, to meet the
specialized needs of product development. The LCSIS system
enables the effective integration, structuring, and dissemination
of the critical product and process data associated with
Product Development, Engineering, Production, Customer Service
and Support.
LCSIS also promotes cross departmental synergism and optimal
use of organizational resources by combining a robust data
management environment with an easy to use interface to
increase productivity, improve standards
compliance, and build overall competitiveness.
For a web demo of LCSIS and to see for yourself how effective
and economical a PDM solution using LCSIS can be, please
contact Stan
Mazuroski.
Razor: Sales & Training Promotions
We are currently offering a Razor Sales Promo until 03/31/2005.
Any new or current customer who purchases *10* or more licenses
of Razor can select ONE of the following options for FREE:
A. 5 additional licenses of Razor for FREE! - You receive
a total of 15 licenses of Razor!
B. IssueWeaver for FREE! - Razor's web based interface to
the problem tracking database.
C. 1 day of Razor Consulting for FREE! Razor's expert will
be on site to give you expert advise and knowledge.
*** This offer is not valid on previous purchases ***
Any new or current customer who signs up for April Razor
training classes on or before March 15th will be able to
send a second person to training for free. See our website
for more information.
*** This offer is not valid on previous purchases ***
Razor: Updated Pricing
Effective April 10, 2005 selected prices of Razor and IssueWeaver
licenses and maintenance will be increasing by at least
10%. Save money and take advantage of our March promotions
by ordering Razor and IssueWeaver licenses now.
If you have any questions, please contact us at:
+1 315-363-8000, Option 1
Razor_sales@visiblesystemscorp.com
Razor Tech Tip
Renaming a Thread
While there is no "rename" option per sé, you
can duplicate the thread and give it a new name. If the
duplication is successful and the new thread is completely
fine, you can delete the old or use it as a backup. Here's
the command for duplication.
# razor -c dup -f <name> -g <group> -n <new
name> -t <title> /
[-i <issue[:<issue group>]>]
NOTE: The items in brackets is optional.
You could also simply double-click on the thread in the
GUI, and do a "Save As..." from the File/Edit
menu of the Edit Thread GUI, giving the thread a new name.
This would also create a second copy.
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Puzzler
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Question:
The more you take the more you leave behind.
What are they?
The answer to the above puzzle can
be found at:
http://www.visiblesystemscorp.com/News/puzzles.htm
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