Software Configuration Management Strategies and Rational Clearcase: A Practical Introduction

This book provides the reader with a lot of practical advice about using Clearcase and UCM with various size organizations. I have used Clearcase for many years with various software development groups. In my experience, it's rare to find a development group that uses Clearcase to it's full potential. That's usually because not enough thought, planning, and maintenence goes into the SCM process. Clearcase (and UCM for that matter) is just a set of tools. Expecting it to solve your SCM problems out of the box is like expecting a set of carpentry tools to build a house.This book suggests some ways that Clearcase (and branching in particular) can be used to manage software change and release. Some of the techniques are tuned for development groups of a particular size and/or development strategy. That is totally appropriate, since no single SCM process will fit a development group of any size. After reading this book you should come away with many ideas about how to better use ClearCase and UCM in your software organization. And even if you don't choose to use the UCM tool, there are plenty of ideas that can be applied to basic ClearCase usage.

A very nice introduction to base ClearCase and UCM... From branches to streams, to dynamic & snapshot views, this book gets right to the point... Answers to the common questions: Why a snapshot view? Why a dynamic? Why ClearMake vs. GNU make? How can a group of 2 engineers configure their own sandbox? A group of 5? A group of 10? From sharing a dynamic view, to sharing a development stream, to sharing a subproject, this book touches on it all.

NOTE: This book is about a vendor product. Had to say that because too many people have complained that the author spent a lot of time on Rational's tools and approach. Of course - that happens to be fairly obvious from the word "ClearCase" in the title.Good information for planning a ClearCase implementation. One worthwhile use of this book is to prepare your development and release team for ClearCase. This will make sure that everyone is familiar with ClearCase functions and how it is supposed to be used in the software engineering environment. I like the way the book also discusses SCM in general. If you are planning on implementing ClearCase this book is an inexpensive way to prepare your team. If you're shopping for an SCM tool this book will give you an unbiased report on Rational's product. If you want to learn about SCM find another book because this isn't it. Oh, learn to read too.

I purchased this book specifically for information on ClearCase capabilities and features to support some project-related work. I expected a cross between a white paper and sales literature. What I got was a clear description of ClearCase and a relatively unbiased description of its features, how to effectively use it and how to employ it independently of a Rational-centric development shop. The bonus, though, is the first 49 pages that give a well-written overview of SCM in general. I also liked the chapter on the Unified Change Management Model, which seems to incorporate some best SCM practices and is full of ideas from which to borrow... Chapter 4 is where the ClearCase-specific information starts and the author does an excellent job describing how the tool works, introducing Rational-specific terminology and concepts, and showing how the tool can be effectively deployed. This was the information I was seeking when I bought the book and I feel like I got everything I wanted and more. The clearly written text was augmented by equally clear illustrations, which allowed me to quickly absorb the material I needed.This is obviously not an SCM book one would buy unless they needed to know about the ClearCase product. It is, however, an excellent overview and survey of ClearCase for anyone who needs to get quickly up-to-speed on the basics of the tool or is evaluating SCM tools and ClearCase is on their short list.Overall this is a well-written book that is surprisingly unbiased. The author did an excellent job with the entire book and earns 5 stars for sticking to the topic and taking care to make things clear (pun intended).

This book is very helpful for anyone using Rational ClearCase. It contains valuable examples, allowing the ClearCase user or manager of a CM group to gain additional insights regarding how to best apply the tool. The book also introduces basic concepts and the evolution of Software Configuration Management tools. It also explains how CM can be managed and controlled both within a project and between multiple projects. Additionally, the book explores the Configuration Management issues and approaches related to managing geographically distributed development projects.