This demonstration provides an overview of how to use IBM® Rational® Asset Manager as your definitive software library to build and publish assets. See how Rational Asset Manager, Rational Build Forge and Rational AppScan can automate the delivery and governance of reliable software builds.

Demonstration by Dr Gili Mendel.

Rational Asset Manager v7.2 is Available.   Learn what is new in this 6 part Webcast series.   In Part 1 of Rational Asset Manager v 7.2 What’s New, see how you can search for assets in the Web client.

Rational Asset Manager v 7.2 What’s New Part 1 Search

In Part 2 of Rational Asset Manager v 7.2 on Jazz  What’s New,  see how you can create assets in the Web client.
Rational Asset Manager v 7.2 on Jazz What’s New Part 2 Create & Review Assets

In Part 3 of Rational Asset Manager v 7.2 on Jazz  What’s New,  see how you can define the asset governance process for each role, community and asset type in the Web client.

Rational Asset Manager v 7.2 on Jazz What’s New Part 3 Define Governance Process

In Part 4 of Rational Asset Manager v 7.2 on Jazz  What’s New,  see how you can Use and Report on Assets in the Web client.

Rational Asset Manager v 7.2 on Jazz What’s New Part 4 Use and Report on Assets

In Part 5 of Rational Asset Manager v 7.2 on Jazz  What’s New,  see how you can Use and Create  Assets in Development in the Rich client and other build tools.
Rational Asset Manager v 7.2 on Jazz What’s New Part 5 Use and Create  Assets in Development

Learn what is new in this 6 part Webcast series.   In Part 6 of Rational Asset Manager v 7.2 on Jazz  What’s New,  see how you have more flexible options for deploying RAM and where you can learn more information.
Rational Asset Manager v 7.2 on Jazz What Else is New

This web cast  by Bobby Pham demonstrates how services can be created and governed through their lifecycle using Rational Asset Manager (RAM) seemlessly working with other development tools and runtime tools.   The  service specification starts as work in progress using a source version control system like Subversion where there are many iterations and versions before it is published to RAM as a milestone asset.   Once published to RAM, governance includes asset reviews, notifications and policy validation.   Rational Asset Manager is seemlessly integrated into the tools used by the different roles.    This demonstration is 23 minutes long and includes the use of Rational Rational Software Architect for modeling the service,  Clearvision Subversion plugin for versioning the artifacts, WebLayers for providing policy libraries that plug into RAM and WebSphere Service Registry for service deployment capabilities.

Directions to watch the demonstration.

1. Download the demonstration zip file.
2. Extract the contents of the zip file.
3. Open the file named RAMSOAGovernance.html in your browser

The latest release of Rational Asset Manager v7.1.1.1 was made available today.  This is a service pack release.   This release also includes some small enhancements that customers told us they needed.   Here is where you can find more information:

Install Guide

Release Notes

Here are some of the value add “goodies” in this release.

Administrative improvements

• Platforms
  • Added SUSE Enterprise Linux 10 SP1 (x86_64bit) – Kernel 2.6.16.46-0.12-smp (1)
  • Added LDAP support for Tivoli Directory Server v6.2
• Asset Zip filenames now support multi-byte charset
• Provide the ability for admins to set the path of debug and log files for RAM
• Major improvements to the setup Assistant (will log/show in a nice HTML table) all WAS, and DB based updates/changes, or configurations
• Server Status
  • View job status
  • View active web sessions
  • View active web service sessions
• Run RAM Batch Client headless

Asset Management Improvements

• Read only attributes
• Add option to “Cancel a review“
• From Asset, Visualize Asset link to visual browse
• Improvement in display order of asset attributes
• Link and user attributes allow multiple selection
• Support more URL formats for Asset URL artifacts like: notes://D25WEB1/8525727300578ED8/F2B15920D645AA7985256811006AA0E9/D81A579182B9B5C1852572AA004E7B5B

Other Usability Improvements

• Reports URL Activity Reports include “browse”
• Reports URL request multiple activities using tid=(value,value) now works
• SOA – Ability to publish xsl files to WSRR and to be able to relate them to current concepts
• Remove an asset from an Asset Library Task
• Turn off visual browse animation to improve performance
• Search improvements Now Index:
  
  • Category name/description
  • Asset type name/description
  • Community name/description
• Ability to control policy execution order

To see some of these new features in action and to see how RAM can be used as a Definitive Software Library with Rational Team Concert and your Eclipse based IDE check out this demonstration by Dr Gili Mendel.  The viewlet shows how technical assets (services & J2EE Ear/War) can be developed with RAM.

You must download and extract the files in the zip file.  Click on the file ram711_sp1_viewlet_swf.html  You can view the file with Internet Explorer or Firefox.

]]> http://rationalassetmanager.wordpress.com/2009/03/27/rational-asset-manager-v7111-available/feed/ 0 CarlosF http://rationalassetmanager.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/managing-systems-assets/ http://rationalassetmanager.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/managing-systems-assets/#comments Mon, 16 Mar 2009 02:27:16 +0000 Carlos http://rationalassetmanager.wordpress.com/?p=232 ]]>

RAM is being used by both IT customers and Systems customers.   Here is a Webcast that describes what the market drivers are influencing Systems customers to adopt RAM for Product Data (Asset) Management.  The Webcast includes a highlevel overview of Rational Asset Manager.

This tutorial covers 2 topics.   The first is XML searching of assets.  Many of the assets customers manage often contain XML artifacts.  RAM indexes a variety of artifacts so you that can search for them based on their contents.   Some examples of the supported artifact types are XML, Microsoft PPT, Visio, Excel, Adobe PDF and many more.  In the versions prior to RAM v7.1.1, you could search on a term like “carlos” and select the search option”within artifacts” and RAM would return all assets that had artifacts that include the term “carlos”.  The challenge is what if there were 100’s of assets that had “carlos”?  In RAM V7.1.1 you can add index rules that will allow you to search by providing additional criteria like find “support person”=”carlos”  where support person is an XML element or attribute that is in the xml artifacts and has the value carlos.    This doesn’t require you to specify an asset attribute but rather an XML element value in the an asset attribute that RAM will look for in an asset artifact.  This is a very powerful feature especially for customers who are using RAM to manage their software models or other XML based assets. This ensures you find the assets you are looking for.

The second topic covered in this tutorial is how to share assets with your supply chain or more broadly.   Most people share assets by sharing the component or document.  What this approach lacks is the context, understanding or common language for how these assets are used, work together or the level of quality or compliance the assets have.  By being able to share the asset governance model that defines how these assets can be used and work together, you add another level of usability and value to the individual assets.  This ensures the assets you provide and receive are consumable and provide value.    RAM v7.1.1 added the ability to create asset libraries.

Watch this tutorial on the Rational Asset Manager Exchange to see how to create XML search rules and package or create asset libraries and their corresponding governance models.  Our hope is customers will begin to create their own asset governance models for different domains like the previous one we have shared for Maven.   Customers can share these asset libraries on the Rational Asset Manager Exchange so that others can jump start their asset management initiatives for different domains within their organization.  We use Maven as an example since this is domain where we have some customers using RAM to visualize and govern their maven component dependencies .

An important factor for ensuring the assets you create are used is to apply the necessary metadata so that they are found. Asset consumers often don’t take the time to properly fill in all the appropriate attributes or assign the appropriate categories. As a result these assets may not be found when people search for them. This results in duplicate assets and wasted work. Also, incorrectly categorized assets may not get the appropriate review, which can result in rework by teams who try to use the defective asset.

This tutorial shows how XML artifacts can be used to assign asset attributes and categories so that you can automate asset submission for any domain area. In the demonstration we show how RAM can automatically assign asset attribute values and categories by introspecting the asset XML artifacts.  The example focuses on Apache Maven components. Component consumers can then submit Maven components to the repository faster, find them faster and have a graphical view of the dependencies and component metadata.

This Webcast presentation and demonstration on the Rational Asset Manager Exchange part 1 shows  how RAM v7.1.1.1 can automate asset submission for assets that have an XML Artifact, like assets for Maven.  Download the demonstration Maven Asset Library and try it out yourself with your own Maven components.

Part 2 of the Webcast shows step by step directions for administrators to setup automated asset submission for Rational Asset Manager.  The zip file a also includes the presentation used in the Webcast.

As Cloud Computing takes off customers are struggling contain the proliferation of 100s of similar virtual images or appliances.   Here is an interesting article excerpt from  Reuters Report. It describes how application architectures need to consider virutalization and that there will be “virtualization Sprawl” from the proliferation of images.

“The flip side of the coin is that rapid application provisioning and delivery can create new costs and risks. Reducing the friction from application deployment will likely increase pressures on new application deployment and demand. The well-known real-world equivalent is known as “server sprawl.” The analog in the VM world will be known as “VM sprawl.” The consequence presents a plenitude of unknowns. Organizations must recognize that they not only may be exchanging one
cost and management style for another, but that as physical machines are turned into virtual machines, virtual sprawl is likely to outstrip physical sprawl. Moreover, how VM sprawl acts on the network, storage, I/O and compute power across a network of server nodes, and in an increasingly dynamic model of services, will be a complex multivariant problem.”

This RAM Webcast Demonstration shows how RAM was used to manage virtual appliances.  By making it easier for teams to find existing images that meet their needs therefore avoiding duplication.  Also by providing the necessary governance to ensure that virtual appliances are within compliance.   In this demonstration you can see how teams collaborate to find and share assets using Rational Asset Managers Web 2.0 capabilities.

RAM v7.1.1 is able to be customized to automatically capture metadata from standards based files like the OVF file format shown in this demonstration.  Which reduces the amount of time it takes to submit assets but also reduces errors in entering metadata by hand when submitting assets.   You can learn more about the OVF standard here.  You can learn more about Rational Asset Manager here.

RAM can also manage the business process assets, services and applications that are related to or installed on or used by these Virtual Appliances.

Rational Asset Manager provides the ability to create report data URLs that when invoked in a browser generate XML documents.  The report data returned is based on query parameters passed in the URL.  The data returned can be formatted into a easy to read report.   In previous blog posts we described a variety of report formatting technologies that could be used. You can use Birt or other reporting tools to display RAM reports like using Microsoft Excel worksheets. In this Webcast and samples below, I describe how you can use HTML and JavaScript to display formatted reports.

You can download the samples and Tutorial Webcasts from the Rational Asset Manager Exchange using the links below.

HTML Reports With Rational Asset Manager Samples

HTML Reports With Rational Asset Manager Tutorial WebCast

Here are the sample reports provided that are provided that you can add to your own assets.

In this Webcast you can listen and watch Jonathan Stinton give a tutorial on developing, configuring and deploying policies with RAM v7.1.1.

To play this recording you must download and install the Raindance Player which can be found here https://cpc.on.intercall.com/confmgr/installs/MeetingPlayer.exe

You can find this tutorial recording on the Rational Asset Manager Exchange .