Rational Synergy is a software tool that provides software configuration management (SCM) capabilities for all artifacts related to software development including source code, documents and images as well as the final built software executable and libraries. Rational Synergy also provides the repository for the change management tool known as Rational Change. Together these two tools form an integrated configuration management and change management environment that is used in software development organizations that need controlled SCM processes and an understanding of what is in a build of their software.
Synergy began in 1988 as a research project for computer-aided software engineering by software developer Pete Orelup at Computers West of Irvine, California. Computers West was supporting itself through contract software development and an application for finance and insurance at automobile dealerships on the Pick OS.
In 1989, the company decided to pursue development of a software configuration management and revision control product, renamed itself CaseWare, Inc., and hired three more developers. The system was re-imagined as a platform for building SCM systems running on Unix (Sun Solaris).
It was decided that a compiled language such as C++ was not sufficiently flexible, reliable, and productive, and so a new programming language called ACcent was created. ACcent has many features similar to Java, but pre-dates it by five years. It has a compiler that compiles to machine-independent byte-codes, and a virtual machine execution environment with automatic memory management. Except for the compiler and execution environment, the entire Amplify Control product was written in the ACcent language, including a scalable, networked client-server architecture and use of a SQL database with a schema flexible enough to allow customer extension of the built-in data types in ACcent without changes to the physical schema.
The company was somewhat successful, but lacked experienced leadership and started to lose market share to IBM DevOps Code ClearCase. In 1991 the company was nearly broke and the original developers walked out en masse. A new CEO was brought in, and the company was relaunched, although without the developers. Both CaseWare and Amplify Control were renamed Continuus Software in 1993.
By 1997 Continuus was approaching 100m in revenue and expanded into Europe, eventually opening a help desk office in Ireland with the intention of eventually providing 24x7 support to the Fortune 500. It considered the Rational Clearcase product line as its competitor in the Engineering and Scientific market and Platinum Harvest as its competitor on Wall Street. It began to recruit CM people as sales engineers out of its client base at this point from clients.
The fears over the Y2K bug was a profitable motivator for clients to buy SCM products such as Continuus at this point. Smaller organizations that grew too large for Visual Sourcesafe and PVCS looked to "move up" as they "got religion" after realizing that they were missing code, stomping on each other's changes or not having enough workflow to be able to run smoothly. One of Continuus' major selling points at this time was Task Based CM, a customization that one of their major clients (Tandem Computer) had requested which they had rolled into the main product. This turned into a major selling point over Rational Clearcase which still needed major add-on professional services work to adapt to a customer's workflow and methodology.
Continuus tried with mixed success to jump on the .com bandwagon as well. During this period with the VP of Engineering looked at getting things to work under Tomcat using servlets and a "light" version of the middleware process which was known as the "engine process". This eventually became part of the product suite which was renamed CM/Synergy and PT/Synergy. After getting Continuus to run its Informix database and server processes on Windows Server, an integration with Visual Studio was added to make Continuus look like Visual Sourcesafe to the IDE. Walt Disney bought into the product as it addressed its Y2K issues. US Internetworking (USi) became the "largest single transaction" in early 1999.
Other companies that were clients at this point included Remedy (help desk software), Signet Bank, Bank of America, SAIC (including a rather bizarre collaboration with the Web development company that created the Dr. Ruth sex site), and Novell.
On July 29, 1999, Continuus Software announced a public offering listing its stock on the NASDAQ Stock Market.[2] In October 2000, the Swedish software company Telelogic, agreed to purchase Continuus Software in a deal worth $42 million.[3] Under Telelogic, Continuus was renamed Synergy. It had also recently acquired QSS and the DOORS product line. As a result, in the summer of 2001, it decided to lay off the entire Continuus Professional Services organization staff, reasoning that the QSS services folk would be able to support both products. That strategy didn't work out so well, and some of the ex-services folk were able to find consulting jobs with Continuus clients. In 2008 IBM announced that it had purchased Telelogic.[4] Synergy was added to the IBM's Rational Software family of SCM tools and named Rational Synergy. In 2021 IBM anncounced the withdrawal and support discontinance of Rational Synergy and Rational Change.[5]
Years, where available, indicate the date of first stable release. Systems with names in italics are no longer maintained or have planned end-of-life dates.
Software configuration management (SCM), a.k.a. software change and configuration management (SCCM), is the software engineering practice of tracking and controlling changes to a software system; part of the larger cross-disciplinary field of configuration management (CM). SCM includes version control and the establishment of baselines.
The rational unified process (RUP) is an iterative software development process framework created by the Rational Software Corporation, a division of IBM since 2003. RUP is not a single concrete prescriptive process, but rather an adaptable process framework, intended to be tailored by the development organizations and software project teams that will select the elements of the process that are appropriate for their needs. RUP is a specific implementation of the Unified Process.
IBM DevOps Code ClearCase (also known as IBM Rational ClearCase) is a family of computer software tools that supports software configuration management (SCM) of source code and other software development assets. It also supports design-data management of electronic design artifacts, thus enabling hardware and software co-development. ClearCase includes revision control and forms the basis for configuration management at large and medium-sized businesses, accommodating projects with hundreds or thousands of developers. It is developed by IBM.
The history of software configuration management (SCM) can be traced back as early as the 1950s, when CM, originally for hardware development and production control, was being applied to software development. Early software had a physical footprint, such as cards, tapes, and other media. The first software configuration management was a manual operation. With the advances in language and complexity, software engineering, involving configuration management and other methods, became a major concern due to issues like schedule, budget, and quality. Practical lessons, over the years, had led to the definition, and establishment, of procedures and tools. Eventually, the tools became systems to manage software changes. Industry-wide practices were offered as solutions, either in an open or proprietary manner. With the growing use of computers, systems emerged that handled a broader scope, including requirements management, design alternatives, quality control, and more; later tools followed the guidelines of organizations, such as the Capability Maturity Model of the Software Engineering Institute.
StarTeam is a version control system used in software development, especially when a project involves multiple teams in different locations. StarTeam is an SCM and SDLC software application, created by Starbase Corporation, which was acquired by Borland in January 2003 which was acquired by Micro Focus in July 2009 and later acquired by OpenText in 2023. The application is client-server, backed by a relational database that retains all changes made to a project during its evolution as well as the project requirements, task assignments, threaded discussions and bug tracking. Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle database are supported database servers.
Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (VSS) is a discontinued source control program oriented towards small software development projects. Like most source control systems, SourceSafe creates a virtual library of computer files. While most commonly used for source code, SourceSafe can handle any type of file in its database, but older versions were shown to be unstable when used to store large amounts of non-textual data, such as images and compiled executables.
Unicom System Architect is an enterprise architecture tool that is used by the business and technology departments of corporations and government agencies to model their business operations and the systems, applications, and databases that support them. System Architect is used to build architectures using various frameworks including TOGAF, ArchiMate, DoDAF, MODAF, NAF and standard method notations such as sysML, UML, BPMN, and relational data modeling. System Architect is developed by UNICOM Systems, a division of UNICOM Global, a United States–based company.
I-Logix was a provider of collaborative Model-driven development (MDD) solutions for systems design and software development, particularly focused on real-time embedded applications. Founded in 1987 and based in Andover, Massachusetts, the company specialized in products that facilitated collaboration among engineers working on embedded systems. Additionally, I-Logix was a member of the UML Partners, a consortium dedicated to the development of the Unified Modeling Language (UML).
The following tables describe attributes of notable version control and software configuration management (SCM) software systems that can be used to compare and contrast the various systems.
Configuration Management Version Control (CMVC) is a software package that serves as an object repository, and performs software version control, configuration management, and change management functions.
Telelogic AB was a software business headquartered in Malmö, Sweden. Telelogic was founded in 1983 as a research and development arm of Televerket, the Swedish department of telecom. It was later acquired by IBM Rational, and exists under the IBM software group.
Build automation is the practice of building software systems in a relatively unattended fashion. The build is configured to run with minimized or no software developer interaction and without using a developer's personal computer. Build automation encompasses the act of configuring the build system as well the resulting system itself.
Rational Rhapsody, a modeling environment based on UML, is a visual development environment for systems engineers and software developers creating real-time or embedded systems and software. Rational Rhapsody uses graphical models to generate software applications in various languages including C, C++, Ada, Java and C#.
Aldon is a business unit of Rocket Software. It develops, manufactures, licenses and supports software change management products for the enterprise application lifecycle management (ALM) and software change management (SCM) markets.
Rational Software Modeler (RSM), made by IBM's Rational Software division, is a Unified Modeling Language (UML) 2.0-based visual modeling and design tool. Rational Software Modeler is based on the Eclipse open-source software framework and is used for visual modeling and model-driven development (MDD) with UML for creating applications and web services. IBM ceased marketing Rational Software Modeler in 2010 and ended support for it in 2015. Much of the same functionality is now available through Rational Software Architect.
AnthillPro is a software tool originally developed and released as one of the first continuous integration servers. AnthillPro automates the process of building code into software projects and testing it to verify that project quality has been maintained. Software developers are able to identify bugs and errors earlier by using AnthillPro to track, collate, and test changes in real time to a collectively maintained body of computer code.
Rational Dynamic Object Oriented Requirements System (DOORS) (formerly Telelogic DOORS) is a requirements management tool. It is a client–server application, with a Windows-only client and servers for Linux, Windows, and Solaris. There is also a web client, DOORS Web Access.
Atria Software Inc. was a software company that developed ClearCase in the early 1990s. It was founded by David B Leblang, Paul Levine, David Jabs and others on January 11, 1990. Some of the Atria developers had worked on an earlier system: DSEE from Apollo Computer. After Hewlett-Packard bought Apollo Computer in 1989, they left to form Atria. Atria later merged with Pure Software to form Pure Atria. That firm merged with Rational Software, which was purchased by IBM in 2003. IBM continues to develop and market ClearCase.
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