Version Control - non supported VCS product

We use MKS Source Integrity for version control at our company. We’ve just purchased webMethods Integration Server 7. MKS is not listed as one of the supported version control systems in the “Version Control System Integration Developers Guide”. I’m hoping we can use our existing MKS Source Integrity in some manner with Developer. Any ideas?

AFAIK, IS 7 isn’t yet released. Fabric 7 ships with IS 6.5.

Refer to Appendix H: Using Source Control with the Integration Server in the Developer Users Guide. It describes manual processes that can be used. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending upon your point of view) you won’t get a right-click-and-check-out capability. It’ll be all manual process.

I usually recommend using the IS package as the smallest artifact for source control. Others like doing source control at the service level.

Hey Rob,

I am versioning at the package level as well using CVS. I am running into some issues with concurrent development requirements. In Java, or other languages, this is easily handled by branching and merging code.

How do you recommend supporting concurrent branches of development on a single package?

I usually recommend NOT supporting concurrent development on a single package. It’s painful.

Generally, the “need” for concurrent development comes from packages that are doing too much. Aggressive scoping of packages can help with this.

Manual procedures can be developed and followed to minimize concurrency and dev delays. When parallel dev MUST happen, the only effective approach I’ve seen implemented is manual merging. Not pretty, but doable.

As far as I know, wM released VCS integration for VSS & ClearCase, and there is non official package for SubVersion also available, which all enable fine grained version control from within Developer down to service level(element level). Do you still recommend do it manually from package level?

I haven’t had the opportunity to work with the VCS features, so the jury is still out.

Based on my investigations, VSS and ClearCase are used to replace the default mecanism of internal IS locking/unlocking plus options to rollback changes to a previous version. If you are looking for a real SCM process, VCS is not much of a help unless you know how to merge two flow.xml files and still get a valid new merged flow.xml :). And if merge doesn’t pan out very easily, the all branching staff is not quite possible. Therefore, yes … the only way to work with branches is to manually propagate the changes between different IS and using a very carefull packaging strategy (one developer per package if posible)! The only solution is webMethods to develop a visual Merge/Diff between packages/services, similar with what IBM did for Rational Software Architect/Developer to Merge/Diff UML diagrams.

I am looking to implement CleaseCase with IS 6.5 and so far most documentations only refers to VSS (Visual SourceSafe). Do you know what value should I set for “watt.vcs.type” for Clearcase ?

Any suggestion is greatly appreciated !! Thanks…

You should try with ‘cc’ or ‘clearcase’, I don’t remember exactly which one should work.

The watt variable should be set to “clearcase”. Also, it requires IS 6.5 Service Pack 3 installed in order to get WmClearCase package. Now, I have to spend some time to fine tune the configuration.

Thank you very much for your suggestion.