A Success Story

SCM implementation for a Bio-Tech customer

Initial Environment

Our services

Rollout proces

Our customer is a pioneer in the Bio Tech Industry and leading researcher  in the Genome Sequencing. Customer spent lots of investment in the sequencing and little investment on the Software Development and its tools. 

Customer asked Roshi Tech to provide a Software Development Environment and Software Configuration Management  for the group.  RTI worked with customer in providing the same.

There are multiple groups working on the sequencing project. The project can be conceived as a "pipeline" in the manufacturing industry. All these groups are working on various sub-projects, which are relatively independent in nature. However, these sub-projects are part of the bigger pipeline that helps in sequencing the Genome.

• Each group has its own set of tools for their development and runtime needs.
• Groups are relatively independent in nature and don't follow same development standards.
• No common source code repository.
• Duplication of work and lack of co-ordination.

RTI has visited the customer and discussed with various groups and identified a broad list of tasks to be addressed.

• Runtime environment
• Code management
• Development process
• Change Management
• Build Management
• Release Management
• Patch Management

After talking to the management we further divided these tasks in to multiple sub-tasks and addressed 

Roshi Tech used Ration Suite and followed Rational Unified Process (RUP) to implement this project. We used Requisite Pro for managing our requirements. Rose for Design and Analysis and ClearQuest to keep track of Projects requirements and Task lists, ClearCase for versioning of the project sources and documentation. Integrated with MS Project to manage the schedules.

1. Identified a basic runtime environment tools.

Application Runtime environment consists of Apache's Web Server, Tomcat's Catalina App Server and Oracle's Database server. Read this for architectural details. Sequencing process also involves various other tools such as Oracle Process Management tools, Cognos reporting tools, Perl scripts and other Bio-Tech tools.  They are not in the current scope of this article.

2. Configured & Created Multiple runtime instances.

•   Multiple runtime instances for developers to test their code.

• A runtime environment for Build and Release team to do the smoke test of the applications, before handing over the image to QA.

• QA runtime environment for QA to test the product.

• Production environment for the actual sequencing project.

3. Code Management

Customer selected CVS for their Version Controlling needs. RTI has implemented CVS based SCM solutions to its customers. Customer is developing application using JAVA technology. Directory structure is created following industry standard package naming convention. CVS modules are defined to fetch needed code from the repository. Directory structure also supports the build system created using ANT to support deployable Web Archive (WAR) packages.

4. Development Process

RTI integrated various development tools to support developers and provided tools to create independent work areas and test environments. 

• Integrated with RT Request Tracking system.

• Integrated tools like ANT, CACTUS, JUNIT, Glimpse to provide a better SDE .

• Rolled out SunONE / Forte development tools

• Integrated SQL Navigator and CVS to source control Schema, Stored procedures, triggers and Functions.

5. Change Management

• Developed a process to implement a change management.

• Controlled changes to the system and identified each change back to its Change Request.

6. Build Management

• Developed ANT based build scripts to build Java code and packages.
• Developed scripts for deploying various WEB applications and also cgi-bin scripts in multiple RUN time environments.

7. Release Management

• The product consists of multiple components to work in conjunction to sequence the human Genome.
• Product is for internal use only. There are no external customers for this product. 
• Introduced versioning of the products and Components. 
• Controlled the release of the sub-products 
• Provide a mechanism for Roll-backs, in case of a product / component failure.
• Introduced a systematic process of Release. Developers to QA and then into Production.

8. Patch Management

Since the product is a complex system and consists of various components, it is important to managed the patches to the production environment. Patches are to be well controlled before rolling into the multiple environments. Each patch is to be identified and should be re-producible. All patches are to be rolled up into the new version releases.

• Developed Patch identification system
• Controlled patches and supported developers in creating patches (using branching technology).