Product overview
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1. Introduction
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2. Key Benefits
1. Introduction :
SCM4ALL enables secure and flexible process-centric application lifecycle management, for both Agile and Traditional software development teams.
SCM4ALL is the most technologically advanced solution on the market today for managing software change, offering a uniquely integrated web-based application lifecycle management (ALM 2.0) platform. SCM4ALL combines both continuous integration and life-cycle management, offering a single point of control and delivering support for your build, deploy, release and application lifecycle management processes.
There are many excellent versioning systems on the market today which offer complete versioning control, but there is no solution for build management, deploy management and so on. Many of these users would like to evolve to the next level but want to keep using their favorite versioning tool. SCM4ALL tightly integrates with leading existing third-party versioning solutions (e.g. IBM® Rational® ClearCase® (UCM and Base), IBM® Rational® ClearCase® LT, Microsoft® Visual SourceSafe®, Serena® PVCS Version Manager, CVS, Subversion), build tools (Make, Ant, NAnt, Maven 2) and deploy software (Ant, NAnt, Maven 2). It offers a unique cross-platform ALM 2.0 solution, combining Continuous Integration and Life-Cycle Management, extending and automating functions for Build Management, Rebuild, Manual Build, Release Management, Approval Processes and Deployment Management.
Today's short cycles of both Agile and Traditional software development requires continuous integration, sound testing, and continuous verification of the code. By automating these back-end activities, SCM4ALL provides an incrementing refresh frequency, which can be incorporated into daily development tasks, eliminating bottlenecks in feedback cycles. A tailored life-cycle process from development, test, quality assurance and production can be easily defined, implemented and enforced, offering a comprehensive framework across all major platforms including Windows, UNIX, Linux and IBM mainframe systems. It also supports a stream-based project model meaning that a product manager has the ability to add a life-cycle to each version of a product. This way you can easily differentiate between maintenance and release builds and deployments.
SCM4ALL facilitates compliance with legislation like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, DO-178B and numerous similar state-specific acts and improves an organization's ability to conform to popular process standards (such as the CMM, ITIL, Six SigmaT). It can play an integral part in achieving compliance through automation of the business process, including all software development processes, and by providing full audit trails and reporting ability. SCM4ALL offers an organization one versatile process, one secure pipeline through which applications are delivered safely and efficiently into production, saving time by eliminating errors while meeting corporate standards, and ensuring Quality Management. It keeps to a minimum the impact on and the tool-specific training needs of the software engineering team. SCM4ALL continuous where versioning stops, improving your entire application lifecycle management, and saving time and money on radical migration effort.
2. Key Benefits :
- Multiple VCR support
- Keep working with your existing tools for development, versioning, testing, tracking,…
- Controlled build process independent of the versioning tool
- Easily reuse existing build/test/deploy scripts from leading scripting tools like Ant, NAnt, make, …
- Early developer feedback: when builds fail, the responsible developers are notified and corrective actions can be taken quickly
- Reduce build complexity and accelerate release cycles
- First class usable web interface with clear validations and tests to speed up the administration process. No more XML tweaking to setup a ContinuousIntegration process.
- Controlled release process for building/rebuilding and delivering applications independently on the logical (Development, Test, QA, Production) and/or physical environment (Windows, Linux, Unix, Z/OS)
- Flexible Build configuration
- Able to manage a pool of build servers
- Able to do parallel (re)build on multiple platforms. (Different Windows OS, Windows + Linux environments, different Unix machines, build on Mainframe, ….)
- Support for distributed builds
- Speed up long lasting bottlenecks in the development process thanks to features like incremental build and partial deploy
- Support for both distributed and non distributed platforms
- Solves complex deployment issues like addressing servers in the DMZ or keeping life clustered servers
- Notification and Approval facilities
- Support for multiple life cycles: main development, maintenance release, urgency fix, parallel development, ....
- Ensuring the “source to load” link in every stage of the life cycle
- Traceability: Easy to answer questions like who, what, where and when. Directly know which version of the build artifacts are deployed on the test/qa/production server. See in an instant the status of a project: which version is currently in production, what are the people of QA testing, which bugfixes have been finished by development, what is the status of the offshore development project, which version of which dll/jar/copybook is used to build your project
- Set up an Agile non intrusive ALM 2.0 process which suits both your developers, build- release- and project managers
- One click interface to bring your application life on AMAYW* servers in parallel * (as many as you wish)
- Easily roll-back to a previous release
- Integrated with the security system in place
- Promotes reuse thanks to project dependencies
- IT maturity model compliancy (CMM, ITIL, Prince, Six Sigma) and legislation like SOX
3. Architecture :
SCM4ALL's architecture consists of a multi-tier, cross platform solution, with a central main server and distributed agents.
INTERFACE
Both a browser-based web interface and a commandline interface are offered.
CENTRAL SERVER
The central server, which is a Java web application is responsible for:
- User authentication and authorization
- Hosting the web application responsible for the user interface
- Monitoring the distributed version repositories
- Scheduling builds dependent on the specified criteria
AGENTS
The distributed agents are responsible for building and/or installing the applications.
REPOSITORY
The data repository is an open central database where all administrative data and the audit trail history are stored. SCM4ALL communicates with the repository using standard JDBC interfaces. The required JDBC drivers are installed along with the product. The repository can reside in any RDBMS system such as MS/SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, Informix or IBM DB2/UDB.
VERSION CONTROL
The source code is always stored in a Version Control Repository. SCM4ALL integrates with different known versioning systems like CVS, Microsoft Visual SourceSafe, IBM Rational ClearCase LT, IBM Rational ClearCase (UCM and Base) Subversion, Serena® PVCS Version Manager and many more.
