TeamConnection to VisualAge for Java Bridge
DGA's "IBM TeamConnection to IBM VisualAge for Java" Bridge
DGA is a London based software house and consultancy, with customers around the world. We were once described by an IBMer as "Technical Glue Manufacturers", and we spend much of our time gluing one part of IBM to another (and this Bridge is no exception). We have various products, the most notable of which currently is our family of eMail gateways between IBM legacy eMail systems (IBM OfficeVision/VM, DISOSS, OV/400) and Lotus Notes/Domino and cc:Mail. We also have document transformation systems. We know lots about the technical aspects of connecting host and PC systems (we actually were part of the original IBM team that designed first the Client-Server model, and then the Three Tier Client-Server-Host model).
We are a small unit, and aim to provide specialist technical backup to other more general systems houses and corporate development teams. We also produce such special products as the Bridge for general release and do commissioned work to provide other such code.
We use TC and VAJ internally, hence the Bridge. Originally we wrote everything in C/C++, and specialised in the OS/2 platform. We do some NT work, but not much, and all our development now is moving to Java and Linux.
Currently we have no other offerings in this area. However when TC 3.0.3 is released IBM Raleigh are adding some functionality which we may use both within the bridge and with other products, but we can not currently commit to anything either by way of function or availability.
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News:
- 03/Aug/2000 Well I am not that impressed with WebDAV/Delta-V. I think they are fundamentally misconstrued. The aim is good, but as with HTTP there is a problem that they are considering individual files rather than collections/projects/whatever you want to call them. This is really the same problem as the JAR file addresses for Java applets. Without treating collections as single entities all the transactional problems of knowing what has been updated (and what has not) and recovering from failures comes roaring into view. I am therefore not currently inclined to do a WebDAV version. So I am now looking for a sensible alternative. The obvious place to start is CVS, but that too allows too much focus on individual files, so maybe I need to address that end as well. More annon.
- 25/Mar/2000 Just for information. As you will be aware Team Connection seems to be doomed. For as long as it exists, we will maintain this code. We are also looking at producing a new version, which will be WebDAV/Delta-V enabled, but before we can do that a few changes are needed to Delta-V and we are working with the Delta-V IETF committee to get those made. We will then produce an interface which follows the same philosophy of fetching and saving entire Delta-V workspaces.
- 22/Dec/1999 Tested with Linux version 3.0 (using test version of Tools API). It works, so it should work with all the V3.0 platforms. Whether it will work with the Java 2 EA version is doubtful as that uses a different Swing and as I do not run Windows I can not test it. Once the Tools API is properly released for Linux I will also release the tool as both a ZIP file and a TAR.GZ file.
This tool is an extension to IBM VisualAge for Java which allows the Source code for Projects to be maintained by IBM TeamConnection, using its Life Cycle facilities. As it is written in Java it should run on any platform on which VisualAge for Java is supported, and is agnostic to the platform on which the TeamConnection server is running. It also provides a facility for fetching and saving directories of files from TeamConnection (the directory corresponds to a workarea) so that code such as JNI interface code developed using the Workbench in VisualAge for C++ can handled in the same manner as the Java code.
Both the VAJ and Directory forms of this tool provide a workarea centric view of TeamConnection. Complete workareas are fetched and saved rather than individual files. Additionally the TeamConnection information is saved with the fetched project/directory for use when it is saved, rather than using the environment variables which the Workbench integration requires (which makes it difficult to have multiple workareas for different components and releases open at once). Additionally with these tools you do not have to create parts, they are created dynamically when you create the corresponding classes/files.
This code is work in progress, and any problems or comments should be sent to mailto:David.Goodenough@DGA.co.uk. Changes will be notified to the TeamConnection and VisualAge for Java Newsgroups on news.ibm.com. Although it is no longer marked as a Beta (we use it in production) remember that this is Freeware, not a paid for product.
We hope that the Bridge is useful to you, and that we can also provide other services to you.
To install this code download one of the Zips below (by default take the latest one) into the ibmvjava\ide\tools directory, and then with that directory as the currently directory unzip the file maintaining the directory structure. Then (re)start VisualAge for Java and you should find a Tools entry under the Help menu for TeamConnection Bridge and that describes how to use the Bridge. There should also be two additional menu items, one under the Workspace Menu entry, and the other on the Selected menu (or popup) when the selected item is a Project.
If you wish to use the directory Fetch/Save facility, you also need to get a copy of Swing 1.0.3 and tailor the two batch files (DirFetch.cmd and DirSave.cmd) to point at the ibmvjava\ide\tools\uk-co-dga-teamconnection directory and the directory containing Swing and add these modified batch files to the path. Help for the directory portion of the bridge is contained in the same help file as the VAJ help (Tc2Vaj.html).
** Not at all sure this is still necessary, but obviously the client will be needed to interact with TC for the other stages of the TC lifecycle. ** Make sure you have set up the TeamConnection client on your machine before installing this code, as that way your connection to the TeamConnection server will already have been setup.
Known Problems
- Only the contents of the project are saved to TeamConnection. This is difficult to solve, as you do not know which referenced classes should be saved. It would be nice to have the second dialog from the Export process of VisualAge, from which you can request and then edit the referenced classes. An alternative would be to save only those classes for which source was available and whose package names started with the same prefix (length being configurable) as the ones you are saving (this assumed you are using the Java convention of prefixing your package names with some form of your Domain name). If anyone has a preference please let me know.
- No support for VAJ 3.5 tech previews (or the Java2 Early Adopters Edition as it currently seems to be named). It would appear that I was wrong in assuming that the package names changed with Rollup2 and 3.0, they do not so it should work with these releases (although the Tools API is missing from the 3.0 tech-preview for Linux so it will not work and the newly released 3.0 Pro version has not been tested yet). It is untested with other than raw 2.0, but I am confident it should work with the others and if you get a problem please let me know. The 3.5 version will use the new Swing 1.1 names, and definitely will not work with the current versions of this code.
Change History
| Date released | Version | Description | Size | Download |
| 03/Aug/2000 | 0.16 | Changed the menu structure, and added some utilities for disaster recovery. NOTE, use these at your own risk.
Also fixed some minor problems, and more multiple response items that new releases of TC seem to raise. | zip: 96806
tar.gz:
78832 |  - tc2vaj.0.16.tar.gz  - tc2vaj.0.16.zip |
| 24/Mar/2000 | 0.15 | Fixed some problems with multiple responses from TC 3.0.3+. Also added
TAR version for Linux/Aix sites. | zip:
84834
tar:
143360 |  - tc2vaj.0.15b.tar  - tc2vaj.0.15b.zip |
| 10/Nov/1999 | 0.14 | Change to DirSave so that it looks for the file type from the content | 84613 bytes |  - tc2vaj.0.14.zip |
| 01/Nov/1999 | 0.13 | Added DirSave and DirFetch and renamed Fetch and Save to VajFetch and VajSave respectively |  | Not released |
| 28/Oct/1999 | 0.12 | Separated common code ready for DirFetch and DirSave | | Not released |
| 22/Oct/1999 | 0.11 | Removed some Project comment lines, some were of no interest, others were <null> | | Not released |
| 08/Oct/1999 | 0.10 | Added Bridge history (fetches and saves) to Project comment | | Not released |
| 01/Oct/1999 | Beta 0.9 | Extended progress indicator (it still does not work perfectly) | | Not released |
| 16/Sep/1999 | Beta 0.8 | 1) When you fetch the workarea the comment for the project will be populated with all the details of the workarea, and all the notes associated with this defect/feature, and its history.
2) If the Project or Packages already exist and are not open editions they will be made open editions before the optional delete and the load.
3) If you tried to communicate with Team Connection with a bad user/password combination with previous versions it got NullPointerException. It now puts up a Dialog telling you that Team Connection does not consider you are not authorised. | 30222 bytes |  - tc2vaj.0.8.zip |
| 06/Jul/1999 | Beta 0.7 | Removed note about restriction with Rollup2 and Beta 3.0 of VAJ.
Fixed NullPointerException in Save (actually fixed in 0.6, but 0.6 was never released)
Fixed "no id tag in TCPART" response from TC when saving .class files. | 34326 bytes |  - tc2vaj.0.7.zip |
| 28/Jun/1999 | Beta 0.5 | Added save of Class and Resource files. | 34405 bytes |  - tc2vaj.0.5.zip |
| 21/Jun/1999 | Beta 0.3 | Fixed NullPointerException in Save if the Project had not been fetched from TeamConnection | 32770 bytes |  - tc2vaj.0.3.zip |
| 03/Jun/1999 | Beta 0.2 | Fixed some problems with the Settings Dialog | 27987 bytes |  - tc2vaj.0.2.zip |
| 03/Jun/1999 | Beta 0.1 | First Beta release | 32329 bytes |  - tc2vaj.0.1.zip |
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