The RMF team is proud to announce the i12.03 Integration build, which brings significant improvements both in the core and the ProR user interface.  Please download it at the RMF download site.

In this iteration, we were focusing on the GUI and on the integration of a new core, as well as infrastructure.  Most of the work was done in a 3-day coding session end of March.  In addition to project leads Michael Jastram and Mark Brörkens, committer Lukas Ladenberger and students Ingo Weigelt and Said Salem participated (photo below).

So what has changed?  All in all, 30 bugs were fixed since the last integration build (Bugzilla querry) Read on to learn more:

The Sprint Team: Lukas Ladenberger, Mark Brörkens, Ingo Weigelt, Said Salem, Michael Jastram

New ReqIF 1.0.1 Core

The core that Nirmal Sasidharan initially created performed well, but had a complicated architecture.  Specifically, it used two EMF models under the hood, One was part of the API, the other existed for persistence only.

The new model, written by Mark Brörkens, uses only one data model, simplifying the code base significantly.  And even though the original core was already fast, the new core is significantly faster.  It also improves handling of tool extensions and XHTML.  It will form a solid foundation for future RMF work.

There has also been a strong focus on ReqIF compliance with respect to the ReqIF 1.0.1 standard, as well as robustness when processing input files with problems.  As two of the parties involved in RMF (Formal Mind and itemis) are part of the ProSTEP implementor forum, we will ensure that RMF is compatible with commercial ReqIF implementations, once they become available.

ProR Improvements (GUI)

The focus for ProR was on removing little annoyances and bugs to improve the user experience – few new features were implemented.  Such improvements include:

• Visual Feedback on Drag and Drop
• No more disappearing scrollbars
• Improved ordering in the Properties View
• Improved Handling of Keyboard actions when editing in the Specification View

Many other issues have been addressed, some of which didn’t affect end users directly (unhandled exceptions, redundant internal notifications, etc.).  Due to some bugs in the old core, tool extensions were not persisted correctly.  With the new core, this has been fixed as well.

Infrastructure at eclipse.org

Last, RMF now takes better advantage of the Eclipse infrastructure.  RMF is now fully integrated into the Hudson-based Continuous Integration System.  new builds are triggered every time code is checked in and is publicly accessible.  Further, the system runs all unit tests (153 as of this writing, all passing).

The system creates binaries for Linux, Mac and Windows, for both 32 and 64 bit systems.  The binaries are P2 enabled, meaning that additional plugins and updates can be installed through the GUI.

How to Provide Feedback

We hope that you check out the latest snapshot.  Please don’t hesitate to give feedback: The RMF Forum can be used for questions that may be of interest to other people as well.  For development-related issues, please use the dev mailing list.  And bugs can be reported directly in Bugzilla.

Best regards,

– The RMF Team

Image: jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net