AccuRev

AccuRev is the leader in process change management for distributed and parallel development, helping organizations make software development faster, more efficient and cost effective by increasing developer productivity, improving quality and reducing administrative costs.

Sparx Systems and AccuRev have partnered together to provide an SCC compliant version control solution that integrates with Enterprise Architect and delivers first-class support for managing model revisions.

AccuRev's process change management products are ideally suited for today's fine-grained distributed development teams spread across remote locations and multiple time zones. Unlike legacy software configuration management tools, AccuRev fuses the development process with the management of software assets, resulting in a reduction from weeks to minutes in the time needed to complete essential software development tasks.

AccuRev's process change management products are used by a growing number of global enterprises, including American Airlines, Citibank, Polycom, Sony Computer Entertainment, Raytheon Company and Lockheed Martin.

To learn more about AccuRev, visit http://www.accurev.com/

Microsoft

Sparx Systems is a VSIP Premier Partner with Microsoft, developing UML solutions for Visual Studio and integrating them with Team Foundation Server.

Partnering with Microsoft to bring the benefits of UML to the .NET community, Sparx Systems’ CEO Geoffrey Sparks said that Microsoft and Sparx Systems shared a common vision during development of the integration tools by Sparx. He remarked “We both wanted to provide end-users – the IT specialists who create and write software – with a set of integrated tools that are powerful without being frustrating.”

Tom Crozier, Senior Marketing Manager for Microsoft stated “Partnering with specialist vendors such as Sparx Systems offers an added level of capability within our development platforms for the developers and enterprises alike”, highlighting the importance Microsoft places in partnering with niche market leaders to offer best-of breed solutions.

For more information please visit:
DevX Extensibility Article
MDG Integration for Visual Studio 2005
MDG Link for Visual Studio .NET
Press Release

Polarion Software

Polarion Software is a global leader of comprehensive application lifecycle management (ALM) solutions and services aimed at improving efficiency and productivity in distributed development environments. Polarion ALM combines every major phase of managing the software development lifecycle into one comprehensive ALM platform that provides teams with the real-time information on the actual state of software development in their organization necessary to make intelligent, informed decisions, while leveraging advanced open source technologies to deliver unique functionality and a significant return on investment.

Polarion ALM for EA establishes a connection between Polarion ALM Enterprise and Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect. This connection is used to establish traceability from the UML model and the model-driven Requirements in Enterprise Architect, to work items managed in Polarion, and vice versa.

Enterprise Architect elements (use cases, requirements, activities, etc.) are imported into Polarion as work items or linked work items to UML Models. These imported work items act as proxies and are imported into the Polarion work items. The proxy work item also contains link(s) to both the element in Enterprise Architect, and to the diagrams containing the element.

Running the synchronization operation from within Enterprise Architect creates a link in each Enterprise Architect element pointing to the corresponding Polarion work item.

Polarion ALM for EA further extends Enterprise Architect into the complete ALM cycle.

For more information, please visit http://www.polarion.com/products/alm/connectors/ea.php

Progress Software Corporation

Progress Software Corporation (Nasdaq: PRGS) is a global industry leader providing application infrastructure software for all aspects of the development, deployment, integration and management of business applications through its operating units: Progress OpenEdge Division, Sonic Software, DataDirect Technologies, and Progress Real Time Division.

Over 2,000 Application Partners worldwide utilize our technology to deliver over 5,000 business solutions configured to the needs of organizations in manufacturing, distribution, financial, retail, health care and many other markets. Over 60,000 organizations, including 70 percent of Fortune 100 companies, utilize annually over five billion dollars of our technology and partner applications and services at over 110,000 sites in over 135 countries.

Headquartered in Bedford, Mass., Progress can be reached at www.progress.com or +1-781-280-4000.

Ravenflow

RAVEN is the world’s first requirements elicitation and definition solution that is integrated directly within Microsoft Word™. Business Analysts who today write requirements documents in Word can easily analyze user stories, use cases or business process workflows and find missing requirements with the push of one button. Unlike other requirements environments, RAVEN does not require the Business Analyst to learn a new applications or languages, so the learning curve is minimal and the reward is high.

In Microsoft Word, select the text of your use case, scenario, user story or business process workflow, and click the Insert Model button. RAVEN parses plain English text, and will insert an Activity Diagram into your document. RAVEN automatically creates a glossary and finds ambiguous requirements statements. Then select Export to Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, and your actors, activities, data objects, and sequences are automatically exported to Enterprise Architect. The combination of RAVEN and Enterprise Architect dramatically accelerates requirements definition and architecture development. Ravenflow customers report cutting weeks and even months off their project schedules as they use RAVEN to quickly build stakeholder consensus and find missing requirements early in the process, before development and coding has started.

http://www.ravenflow.com

Real-Time Innovations (RTI)

Real-Time Innovations (RTI) supplies middleware and distributed data management solutions for real-time systems. With innovative technology and deep expertise in distributed applications, RTI provides an unequaled competitive advantage to customers developing systems that benefit from high-performance access to time-critical data. RTI solutions have been deployed in a broad range of applications including command and control, intelligence, surveillance, data fusion, simulation, industrial control, air traffic control, railway management, roadway traffic monitoring and multimedia communications. Founded in 1991, RTI is privately held and headquartered in Santa Clara, California.

RTI Data Distribution Service is a widely adopted implementation of the Object Management Group (OMG) Data Distribution Service for Real-Time Systems (DDS) specification. It allows networked applications to easily connect with multiple data sources for communication of real-time data via an easy-to-use application programming interface. The technology is well proven and provides deterministic data delivery over standard networks while offering services for monitoring and control.

For more information, please visit http://www.rti.com

Swinburne University

Swinburne University of Technology

Researchers at Swinburne University of Technology are developing an architecture rationalization methodology (ARM), addressing the issues listed in the Project Summary below. It is integrated into the existing UML-based architecture design process, and involves:

• A model to support architecture rationalization that enhances existing architecture design approaches
• Process support and utility functions for capturing and using architecture design rationales based on UML notations;
• UML-based tool support that enables the routine use of the methodology by practitioners.

In particular, the tool support for ARM is being developed on top of the UML tool, Enterprise Architect. It is a collaborative effort between Swinburne University of Technology and Sparx Systems, the developer of Enterprise Architect.

Project Summary - Architecture Design Rationale: Method, Language and Tool Support

Architecture design is widely practiced in the industry. System architects either follow a documented process or rely on their experience in carrying out the architecture design.

While there have been various method, process, language and tool support for architecture design, there has been a critical lack in providing systematic support for the capture and use of architecture design rationales.

Architecture design can be seen as a decision-making process, involving a series of design decisions that translates system requirements into a workable design solution.

The rationales behind these architecture decisions capture the reasons for the decisions and if documented properly, play an important role in the system development process:

• It captures the traceability between system design artifacts.
• It facilitates the deliberation of the design process.
• It helps the review and verification of the system design.
• It helps the analysis of the system design as to its coverage, adequacy and consistency.
• It facilitates the impact analysis of changes to the system requirements, system environments, and system design, especially during system evolution.

For further information, please contact:
Prof Jun Han
Swinburne University of Technology
Email: jhan@swin.edu.au
Research Website: www.it.swin.edu.au/centres/cecses/
Swinburne Website: www.swinburne.edu.au