W I S E : D O C U M E N T A T I O N
Watts Humprey in his book "Managing the Software Process" states "The
most disastrous mistakes are often made when the project is under the
greatest schedule pressure. These are often caused by a loss of change
control that started with a quick object patch. While the harried
programmers invariably intended to document their changes whenever
there was time, it is extremely difficult to remember precisely what
was done and why". Automated systems that handle change requests,
problem reports, activity log entries, provide an excellent platform
for tracking the status of the project. The WISE problem tracker is a
change management system that helps one keep track of problems,
maintain record of changes, solved problems, issues, bugs. Change
management being one of the fundamental activities of software
engineering, an automated tool like the WISE problem tracker can be of
immense help to coordinate the work on a project, distribute effort,
help control of discrepancies, log of all entries, and helps maintain
a continuous flow of data between the various groups.
What initially started as software programmers do's list (Things to
do) the problem tracker helps by not only tracking the problems but
keeping every member of the group in touch with the unsolved and
pending requests/issues. It also serves as a performance
indicator.
Summary
Integrated Software Environment (WISE) is a system for managing issue
reports within a software development effort. Access to documents and
life cycle of issue reports can be managed by an automated tool
revolving around the Web. Browsers like Mosaic/netscape and other user
programs that can access the WWW can be used for this automating
effort.
Among the many advantages that such an automated effort would bring to
a development group some of the key advantages are
Back to start of documentation
Where this project fits in
What this project proposes to do is to design and implement a problem
tracking tool on the Web. The clients would run a browser program and
a centralized project server would serve the requests of the clients.
With the vast variety of browser programs for Unix based, Macintosh
Based, Window based systems, one can access the WWW with great ease.
Tool
Description
The user of the tool specifies the URL (Uniform Resource locator) of
the information server and views the document accessed. He/She may
perform one of the many kind of operations like logging a problem,
viewing existing problems, viewing by priority, view all closed
problems. He could also login bug reports, change requests,
discrepancies. The backend is an Oracle Data- base.
Every time a user selects an option, a query containing the users
interest is sent to the backend through a gateway that helps connect
tot he underlying database.
The information server returns with the data and the user views them.
The above was a very elementary picture of the kind of activities this
tool could be put to use for.
Current Status
We now have a prototype tool working. The current version of the WISE
tool would allow you to view all existing problems stored in an Oracle
Database. Form support for the same has been created using GSQL and
the layout has been completed. The working version is served by our
gateway at hardy a DEC machine running RISC - ULTRIX 4.3. The backend
is Oracle V 6.0. The browser should be one which can access the World
Wide Web like Mosaic, netscape, lynx. A WWW server that can understand
HTTP. We are now working on problem log part and issue life cycle
information and giving the layout a finer touch.
We thank Jason likkai at NCSA, James Pitkow at Georgia Tech for their
help. We also thank a number of people at NASA IV&V facility at
Fairmont and CERC.
Thanks to our research group - a very talented group, they gave useful
feedback.
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