Has anyone used Rational Team Concert (RTC)?

Question

The company I work for is currently evaluating replacements for SourceSafe, and for various reasons, I think RTC will be chosen. I'm a little scared that we're going to end up with a solution that isn't the best for us in our situation. I've tried researching a little bit about what it is, but all I have been able to find are marketing things, but nothing about how it actually works (any of the paradigms it uses, etc).

Our team is around 8 developers and 2 QA people on a single project (and 4-5 more people that would be using it for their independent project). It seems like RTC is targetted for larger teams, but our team is relatively small. Does anyone has experience using RTC in a smaller team?

The project that would be using it is a .NET/WPF application, so we would be using primarily Visual Studio. Is the Visual Studio integration any good, or are we stuck having to have Eclipse open on top of Visual Studio?

Personally, I have been using Bazaar as my personal source control (and checking out/into sourcesafe from a branch), as well as on personal projects. Does RTC incorporate features of "third generation" version control systems, such as first class branching/merging and changesets rather than file changes, and good visualization of where changes come from?

Also, what are the general pros and cons for it?

Answer 1

Why use fancy products many people probably never even heard off? Like you said they are probably bloated or difficult to use or bugged or all of the above.

Why don't you simply do what almost everyone does: use git or subversion (or maybe TFS).

• Probably most of the developers on your team already have experience with them and don't have to waste precious time learning another source control system
• They are used by millions of people and are very mature
• They use very few resources and probably will work perfectly even if the server is your iPhone (except TFS which is super bloated, but I think it scales well with huge teams)
• They are free (except TFS)
• They work on linux, windows and mac (except TFS)
• They have an active and helpful community (except TFS)

Answer 2

You seem certain that the "wrong" decision will be made. Rather than researching how to counter your "next useless source control system", why dont you take up this (very valid, I might add) concerns with the people in charge?

You seem to have used enough different source control system to have a voice in the matter. Why do you think they wont listen?

Is the question about your early research for countermeasures? Or is it about you looking for more valid arguments to bring to the people in charge?

Answer 3

Does RTC incorporate features of "third generation" version control systems, such as first class branching/merging and changesets rather than file changes, and good visualization of where changes come from?

How about checking the actual website and emailing them for the missing info? A quick look shows they do change sets, for example.

Answer 4

We recently migrated to RTC at my day job, and, used to ClearCase, that is a real difference!

To answer a little part of your question: RTC is a real third generation version control system.
In ClearCase, everything was file-based and non-atomic. The RTC changesets on the other hand are atomic and well integrated with my Eclipse workbench. (and integrated IM)
Branching is a little different, RTC has Streams wich you can connect to, and your changesets will be delivered to the (always one at a time) stream you are connected to. You can:

• Suspend changesets to deliver later to a (possible other) stream
• Accept changesets from others connected (indirectly) to the same stream
• Etc...

And RTC is Free for 10 developers!

Answer 5

Does anyone has experience using RTC in a smaller team?

We recently started using RTC on our fairly small team (5 developers). So far I'm pretty happy with it when you contrast it against our old system: CMVC. It's got a much more friendly user interface than CMVC ever had, and seems to be geared towards Agile development as much as a heavyweight version control system can be.

Is the Visual Studio integration any good, or are we stuck having to have Eclipse open on top of Visual Studio?

I'm not familiar with its Visual Studio integration as the team I'm on is Java-only, but it does work fine with non-eclipse editing. I frequently code in another editor other than eclipse and check-in/out from the RTC client without issues.

Does RTC incorporate features of "third generation" version control systems, such as first class branching/merging and changesets rather than file changes, and good visualization of where changes come from?

RTC does a great job with managing changesets, but I can't say much about branching/merging as our project has been pretty well componentized so far (with only one developer per component) and hasn't had any releases yet.

Also, what are the general pros and cons for it?

A big pro of RTC is in how it integrates the support lifecycle into the rest of the Agile development process. Unfortunately, it's a big system and takes a pretty steep learning curve to understand it all.

Answer 6

I am introducing RTC into our sw development team. Currently, we bought the Express version for 15 seats. The Standard version is kind of expensive for our budget so we will try the Express version at first.

RTC is not a pure SCM tool. It is a client (part of) of the new IBM Rational SW Deve Lifecycle management platform (JAZZ). We have ClearCase in our company already. We will continue to use ClearCase to manage the codes while in critical development phase. However, RTC/JAZZ is providing a more flexible/effificent way for initial/developing phase of your project. We really like this part a lot.

I decicided to introduce RTC is for the project management and team collabration that it supports. That is the great part of this tool. If you are moving into Agile world or working on a complicated project, especially rleated to global teams (or other subsystems - hw/system), this tool will help you a lot to manage the tasks and track the progress.

RTC is new so that you will meet issues while using it. However, this is a critical part of Rational business plan so that they would like to solve them and support you.

Answer 7

I'll confess right from the start, I work on Team Concert. Nevertheless I can help answer a couple of the questions. If you have more questions, we have videos and tutorials on our website at jazz.net/projects/rational-team-concert.

Does anyone has experience using RTC in a smaller team?

We started with a small team and have grown into the tool. It's really easy to setup and just run. Then you can use the features that you need the most and you don't have to configure 10 different tools to get things integrated.

We also just made it a lot cheaper for small teams, you basically get 10 free licenses. Jazz.net has the details.

Is the Visual Studio integration any good, or are we stuck having to have Eclipse open on top of Visual Studio?

We have a great Visual Studio 2005/2008 (soon 2010) integration. You can find out more and see videos by reading the following articles:

http://jazz.net/library/video/322

Does RTC incorporate features of "third generation" version control systems

I'm not sure which generation they are part of, maybe the X-gen, but we have put a lot of effort to innovate in the version control area. For a taste of the features and design objectives you can read:

jazz.net/library/presentation/20 and jazz.net/library/article/41

Answer 8

We have been using RTC where I work. We moved from a combination of SVN and CVS. One of the big benefits of RTC is the integration of the entire application lifecycle. This means that you don't have to try tie a bunch of seperate products together for things like work item tracking, build management and source control. All of these are included within RTC.

It seems like RTC is targetted for larger teams, but our team is relatively small. Does anyone has experience using RTC in a smaller team?

It sounds like the Express-C version of RTC would fit your needs. We currently have maybe 5 people using RTC regularly and it works well. The Express-C version of RTC comes with 10 free developer licenses.

The project that would be using it is a .NET/WPF application, so we would be using primarily Visual Studio. Is the Visual Studio integration any good, or are we stuck having to have Eclipse open on top of Visual Studio?

RTC has a Visual Studio 2008/2010 plugin available. It is not as fully featured as the Eclipse plugin, but it handles source control equally well. The main difference is that the Eclipse plugin gives you complete control over your projects, including creating projects, work items, build definitions, etc.

Personally, I have been using Bazaar as my personal source control (and checking out/into sourcesafe from a branch), as well as on personal projects. Does RTC incorporate features of "third generation" version control systems, such as first class branching/merging and changesets rather than file changes, and good visualization of where changes come from?

Yes. There's changesets and changeset listings as well as 'blame' type functionality (from SVN). You can search across iterations and builds for changesets that match your criteria

As a side note. The jazz.net website is a community website, so it is less marketing than you might expect.

Answer 9

What are the risks in the use of the RTC in software development? Thank you for your reply