What is your review process for Rhapsody development?

Question

My team is using the IBM's Rhapsody tool to do real-time embedded development. Unfortunately, we are unhappy with our current review process.

More specifically, we've had difficulty because:

• there is a lack of a good diff tool for diagram changes
• the Rhapsody diff tool doesn't generate reports that you can use in a review
• source file history is spotty because source files are products in MDD thus not configured in a VCS at a high granularity
• running diffs on source code sometimes pulls in unrelated changes made by other devs
• sometimes changing a property of a model element changes dozens of source files
• it's easy to change a source file through a property change and not know it

Does anyone have any tips for making peer reviews on Rhapsody development robust but low-hassle? Any best practices and lessons learned you would like to share? I'm not looking for a mature process write-up; tidbits I didn't know about would be great.

Answer 1

We have been using Rhapsody for development for the past 5 years. Our current process involves using the Rhapsody COM interface and the Microsoft Word COM interface to dump review packages to Word for design reviews. We also do this to generate the reference manual portion of our SUM.

For code we review the generated source.

We put the model into our version control system, and lock down model elements after they have been reviewed. If your version control tool makes things read only when they are checked in, it prevents you from accidentally changing a model element.

The COM interface is also good for dumping the model to make PowerPoint slides of diagrams if you want to present your design to a customer. You will have to tweak the slides after they are generated, as the pictures usually end up looking a little funny, but it gives a quick starting point.