Tool Mentor: Publishing Web-based Rational Rose Models Using Web Publisher

Purpose

This tool mentor describes how to use Rational Rose Web Publisher to create a web-based (HTML) version of a Rose model that others can view using a browser such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator.

Related Rational Unified Process information:

• Activity: Review the Business Use-Case Model
• Activity: Review the Business Object Model
• Activity: Review Requirements
• Activity: Review the Design
• Activity: Architectural Analysis

Overview

By publishing web-based versions of your Rose models, you enable others to non-sequentially browse, search, and navigate your models. For example, you can publish successive iterations of an evolving model for review or to share information. Rose Web Publisher recreates Rose model elements, including diagrams, classes, packages, relationships, attributes, and operations. Once published, hypertext links enable you to traverse the model much as you would in Rose. You can control what Rose Web Publisher includes by setting a variety of options. For example, you can select which views of a model are published, the amount of detail to include, the notation to use, and the graphics format for Rose diagrams. Note, too, that if your model's use cases have RequisitePro use-case documents attached, Rose Web Publisher retains the documents and displays HTML versions of them on the published Web pages.

Tool Steps

There are two ways to publish a model:

1. Using Web Publisher dialogs
2. Using a command line batch interface

1.  Using Web Publisher dialogs

The easiest way to generate a Web-based model is to use the Web Publisher add-in available from the Rational Rose Tools menu. A Web Publisher dialog provides a browser that enables you select which model elements to publish. In addition, you can specify whether or not the classes you publish should include superclass information and which graphics format to use for diagrams (such as .jpg or .gif). The Preview feature lets you launch your default browser and view the published model directly from Rose Web Publisher. 

To publish a model, follow these steps:

1. In Rational Rose, open the model you want to publish.
2. From the Tools menu, click Web Publisher.
3. Use the browser to select model elements to publish; select the publishing options you want to apply.
4. Click Publish when you’re ready to publish the model. 
5. Click Preview to open your default web browser and view the published model. 

For more information on Web Publisher, see the online Help.

2.  Using a command line batch interface

Rational Rose Web Publisher has a command line interface that enables you to publish models using a batch processor. This is especially useful if you want to automatically publish models on a routine schedule. You control how much detail to publish by defining publishing parameters in an initialization file. When you call the Web Publisher processor, you supply the name of the initialization file. The processor, rosewpbatch.exe, is located in the rosewp subdirectory of your Rose installation directory. The syntax for calling the batch processor is: 

rosewpbatch.exe your_initialization_filename.ini 

Example: c:\rose\rosewp\rosewpbatch.exe c:\mybatchfiles\testbatch.ini

Where your_initialization_filename.ini is the name of the initialization file you create. Include the complete path to the .ini file in your call to the processor. If the processor encounters errors, the errors are logged in the rosewpbatch.err file located in the same directory as the processor. You can use any text editor to display the contents.

Copyright  © 1987 - 2001 Rational Software Corporation

Rational Unified Process