Tool Mentor: Configuring Rational Projects Using the Rational Administrator

Tool Mentors > Rational Administrator Tool Mentors > Configuring Projects Using the Rational Administrator

Purpose

This tool mentor describes how to use Rational Administrator to configure Administrator projects.

Overview

In Administrator, you create Administrator projects that store software testing and development information. All Rational components on your computer update and retrieve data from the same project. The types of data in a Administrator project depend on the Rational software that you have installed.

For information on Administrator projects, refer to the following topics in Administrator online Help:

What is a Rational project?
Parts of a Rational project
Benefits of a Rational project

Using the Administrator, an Administrator project can also be enabled for UCM (Unified Change Management), which is the Rational Software approach to managing change to requirements, design models, documentation, components, test cases, source code, and so on.

For information about UCM, refer to the following topics in Administrator online Help:

What is UCM?
What UCM is in Relation to the Rational Administrator
Deciding whether to make the project UCM-enabled

Before you can configure a project, you must create it. And before you can create an Administrator project, you need to resolve key questions. If you plan to UCM-enable the project, you also need to set up Rational ClearCase.

For information about the steps leading up to and including creating an Administrator project, refer to the following topics in Administrator online Help:

Before creating a project
ClearCase setup steps
Creating a Rational Administrator project

If you want to use existing repositories, you can convert them to Administrator projects so that they can be used by the current version of the Administrator.

For more information about conversion, refer to the following topics in Administrator online Help:

Upgrading an SQA 6.x repository
Upgrading a Rational Test 7.x repository

This tool mentor is applicable when running Windows 95/98/2000/NT 4.0.

To configure an Administrator project:

Decide which Rational data structures you want to include in the project
Decide whether to associate the Administrator project with a UCM project (if you have not already done so)
Decide whether to bring a Rational RequisitePro project or a Rational Test datastore under configuration management (if you have not already done so)

1. Decide which Rational data structures you want to include in the project

You can associate various data structures with the Administrator project. The data structures are:

Rational Test datastores
Rational RequisitePro projects
Rational ClearQuest databases
Rational Rose model files

You can create the data structures from within Administrator, or you can select existing data structures, with the exception of Rose model files. Rose model files can only be added, not created, from inside the Administrator.

Refer to the topic titled Configuring a Rational Administrator project in Administrator online Help.

2. Decide whether to associate the Administrator project with a UCM project

After an Administrator project has been created, you can UCM-enable the project if it was created as non-UCM-enabled, but only if Rational ClearCase is installed on your system. You can also UCM-enable requirements assets and test assets in the project as part of modifying the project's properties.

Note that you cannot disable a UCM-enabled project that has datastores under UCM. This means that you cannot change the status of a UCM-enabled project to non-UCM-enabled unless both the test and requirements datastores are also non-UCM-enabled.

Refer to the topic titled Associating a Rational Administrator project with a UCM project in Administrator online Help.

3. Decide whether to bring a Rational RequisitePro project or a Rational Test datastore under configuration management

If you have already associated a RequisitePro project or Test datastore with a project that is UCM-enabled, but have not brought them under configuration management, you can do so.

Also, any UCM project that is associated with the Administrator project will be enabled for change request management if you select a ClearQuest database on the Configure Project dialog box.

However, if a ClearQuest database has already been associated with the UCM project, you will not be able to select or create another ClearQuest database to associate with the Administrator project. To create or change the ClearQuest database associated with an Administrator project, you must create a new project. The ClearQuest database is predetermined by any existing relationship with a UCM project.

In an Administrator project that is UCM-enabled, you can disassociate a RequisitePro project or Test datastore that is under configuration management. Note that removing a RequisitePro project or Test datastore from configuration management does the following:

Copies all of the files in the RequisitePro project and Test datastore to a non-version-controlled area
Associates the project with the non-version-controlled area