Links across project areas after enabling configuration management
To link across project areas in IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management, team members must work in the context of a global configuration. If they do not see the expected links between artifacts, they must refresh their browser page.
Administrators must ensure that the Global Configuration Management (GCM) and Link Index Provider (LDX) applications are installed, and that the ldx.log file does not indicate errors.
- Link management refers to where links are stored and built. For more information, see Linking after configurations are enabled.
- Link validity status, sometimes called validity status, refers to the status of
links between artifacts, which indicates whether the contents of two artifacts meet the intended
meaning of the link between them. For more information, see Link validity.
Link validity information is stored separately from links: it is not stored in the link index.
Not all applications provide validity status information on all link types.
For more information about supported OSLC link relationships and how they appear in Engineering Lifecycle Management applications after you enable configuration management, see Table 1 in Enabling your application to integrate with configuration-management-enabled Engineering Lifecycle Management applications on Jazz.net.
Linking for administrators
To see, use, and create cross-project area links between artifacts, as a Jazz administrator, you must install the LDX and GCM applications.
- Link Index Provider (LDX)
- Builds and maintains an index of links between artifacts in different project areas. The first
time the index builds (after you activate configuration management in the QM and RM applications,
and enable it for at least one RM or QM project area) can take a while, especially for a large
project. By default, the link index refreshes its information every 60 seconds. You can specify a
more frequent refresh rate so that team members see the links that they expect without a delay, but
an increased frequency might decrease system performance. You can change this setting for each data
source in the LDX application. For more information, see Changing the frequency of link index updates.
The LDX application automatically detects the data sources links for the first time, and shows it on the Data Sources page. You can recover the data sources links easily if they are removed or re-created at later point. For more information, see Restoring data sources links in Link Index Provider.
- Global Configuration Management (GCM)
- Provides the configuration context for resolving the links in the index. To see links between
artifacts in different applications, team members set their current configuration context to a
global configuration.
To ensure that team members do not lose their configuration context when they switch between applications, the GCM application caches the links between global configurations and their local configurations. By default, this caching occurs asynchronously every 5 seconds. You can change this setting in the GCM application's Server settings for configuration management.
section. This property is separate from and does not affect the refresh rate of the link index. For more information, see
- Upgrading from version 5 releases: Upgrading from version 5 to any release of version 7 is a two-step process. You must first upgrade your server to the recent fix pack of version 6 release, start the server and make sure your upgrade to version 6.x was successful, and then upgrade to version 7. For more information, see Upgrading Engineering Lifecycle Management. Complete the steps to register the LDX and GCM applications.
- Single Jazz Team Server instance: In a single-server environment where all applications are on one Jazz Team Server instance, go to https://hostname:9443/jts/admin and in the left navigation pane, click Registered Applications. Verify that the LDX (/ldx) and GCM (/gc) applications are in the list.
- Multiple Jazz Team Server instances: For a topology with multiple Jazz Team Server instances, see Getting started for application administrators (global configurations).
Link owner | Owns links to artifacts in these applications | Queries the link index for links to these artifacts |
---|---|---|
Architecture Management (AM, or IBM Engineering Systems Design Rhapsody® - Model Manager)* | RM | CCM, QM |
Requirements Management (RM, or IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS® Next)* | RM | CCM, QM |
Quality Management (QM, or IBM Engineering Test Management) | QM, AM, RM | CCM |
Change and Configuration Management (CCM, or IBM Engineering Workflow Management) | CCM, AM, QM, RM | None |
- An asterisk (*) indicates applications that do not contribute to, and are not polled by, the link index.
- The RM application owns links only to its own artifacts. Requirements are typically completed first in the project lifecycle, when there might not yet be any related artifacts to link to.