Overview

Workflow Visualiser is a tool that takes the RTC process configuration XML and exports graphical representation of the workflows included in the configuration.

Motivation

The most typical task I'm facing at new RTC deployments is analysis of their workflow and its implementation in RTC. The usual procedure is:

1. Meet with the customer to try to understand the workflow (states, transitions)
2. Draw the workflow in Microsoft Visio and discuss the Visio files with customer
3. Implement the workflow in RTC

This would be all great it there wasn't number 4 – implement the changes the customer finds after the implementation in RTC, which usually repeats several times. In this moment the Visio diagrams and the RTC implementation get out of sync and it is not easy to keep them synchronized. Workflow Visualiser helps in this step as I can export the real diagram and either send it to the customer for review or redraw it in Visio.

Another case in which this tool comes handy are big workflows (with 10< states). Although the transition table in RTC workflow designer is straightforward, checking such a workflow is not an easy task. Seeing a graphical representation of the workflow makes it clear.

Running the program

The program has to be invoked from command line and the command line arguments are:

Usage: java -jar visualiser.jar [options] source-xml-file
 Options:
  -h|--help Print help and exit
  --version Print help and exit
  -d|--dot Location of dot executable (defaults to /usr/bin/dot)
  -o|--out Output directory (defaults to /tmp/)
  -f|--format Output format (see the output formats of dot) (defaults to pdf)
  -s|--source Save the DOT source file in the output directory

Examples

Windows example PDF

• JAR stored in C:\visualiser.jar
• Process XML configuration file saved in process.xml
• Graphviz installed in standard location
• Export diagrams in PDF format to „C:\temp“

java -jar "C:\visualiser.jar" -o "C:\temp" -d "C:\Program Files\Graphviz2.26.3\bin\dot.exe" process.xml

Windows example PNG

• JAR stored in C:\visualiser.jar
• Process XML configuration file saved in process.xml
• Graphviz installed in standard location
• Export diagrams in PNG format to „C:\temp“

java -jar "C:\visualiser.jar" -o "C:\temp" -d "C:\Program Files\Graphviz2.26.3\bin\dot.exe" -f png process.xml

Linux example

• JAR stored in ~/visualiser.jar
• Process XML configuration file saved in process.xml
• Graphviz installed in standard location (/usr/bin/dot)
• Export diagrams in PDF format to ~/diagrams

java -jar ~/visualiser.jar -o ~/diagrams process.xml

Download

Prerequisites

The program uses Graphviz for diagram drawing. You must have Graphviz installed on your computer to be able to run the program. It can be freely downloaded from http://www.graphviz.org/Download.php

Binary

Download Runnable JAR

Source code

ZIP with sources includes pom.xml including the Maven project dependencies.

License

Pro program is distributed under Apache License, Version 2.0. For the license agreement of the used libraries see the appropriate license agreement included in the distribution.

Version history

• 2010–04–09 Initial version
• 2010–04–09.2 Resolution edges corrected

Comments, bug reports

Any comments or bug reports are welcome. Send them either in the comments under this article or via email to honza@stastnarodina.com

The official product documentation does not give the exact DB2 command line command. If you use the command from RTC manual, the table creation will fail. This is caused by the pagesize being too small. Use this command to create the database instead:

db2 create database RQM using codeset UTF-8 territory en PAGESIZE 16384

Installation

To install IBM Rational Requirements Composer 2.0.0.1 on 64bit Linux, you need 32bit libraries installed. Strange error message is displayed otherwise when trying to run the installer:

root@rtc:/opt/rrc-install/RRCS_SETUP/InstallerImage_linux# ./install
bash: ./install: No such file or directory

To install the needed libraries run:

apt-get install ia32-libs

The installation should run successfully after this.

Startup

RRC needs swt-gtk to run. Install it by:

apt-get install libswt-gtk-3.4-jni

In addition, RRC needs a X screen to start. There is an IBM Technote with solution for RHEL and Suse. To install Xvfb on Ubuntu do:

apt-get install xvfb

The rest of the procedure (starting the server) is the same as on RHEL or SLES (see the technote).

The server is started by server.startup. This script has to be called from its directory – you need to cd first. The init script can look for example like this:

#!/bin/bash
#
# rrc        Startup script for the RRC
#
# chkconfig: - 90 16
# description: Rational Requirements composer  \
# processname: java
# pidfile: /var/run/rrc.pid
#

prog=rrc
pidfile=${PIDFILE-/var/run/rrc.pid}
lockfile=${LOCKFILE-/var/lock/rrc}
rrchome=/opt/rrc/server
RETVAL=0

start() {
        echo -n $"Starting $prog: "
        # export GTK_PATH=/usr/lib32/gtk-2.0
        Xvfb :1 -screen 0 800x600x24&
        cd ${rrchome}
        DISPLAY=localhost:1.0 ./server.startup
        RETVAL=$?
        echo
        [ $RETVAL = 0 ] && touch ${lockfile}
        return $RETVAL
}

stop() {
        echo -n $"Stopping $prog: "
        ${rrchome}/server.shutdown
        RETVAL=$?
        killall Xvfb
        echo
        [ $RETVAL = 0 ] && rm -f ${lockfile} ${pidfile}
}

# See how we were called.
case "$1" in
  start)
        start
        ;;
  stop)
        stop
        ;;
  status)
        status $prog
        RETVAL=$?
        ;;
  restart)
        stop
        start
        ;;
  *)
        echo $"Usage: $prog {start|stop|restart}"
        RETVAL=3
esac

exit $RETVAL

OS details: Ubuntu 9.04, Server edition, 64bit

• RTC Server version: 2.0.0.1
• OS: Ubuntu 9.04, 64bit. Server edition
• HW: VMWare guest, 64bit, 1GB RAM

Problem

Installation of Rational Team Concert is in general as easy as unzipping the downloaded archive. I did this recently on Ubuntu 9.04 64bit, server edition. Later I have encountered errors when generating any report (for example Floating License Report). I got this message:

CREATE_EXTENSION_FAIL ( 1 time(s) )
 detail : org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.api.EngineException: CREATE_EXTENSION_FAIL
 at org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.executor.ExecutionContext.addException(ExecutionContext.java:1121)
 ....

The post at jazz.net forums suggested, that there are missing libraries required by file */jazz/server/jre/bin/­libfontmanager­.so You can find out which libraries are missing by running

ldd jazz/server/jre/bin/­libfontmanager­.so

My output was:

linux-vdso.so.1 =>  (0x00007fff5efad000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00007fc04eed9000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007fc04ecbd000)
libwrappers.so => not found
libawt.so => not found
libstdc++.so.5 => not found
libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x00007fc04ea36000)
libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00007fc04e72f000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00007fc04e3bd000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007fc04f26f000)
libxcb.so.1 => /usr/lib/libxcb.so.1 (0x00007fc04e1a0000)
libXau.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXau.so.6 (0x00007fc04df9d000)
libXdmcp.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXdmcp.so.6 (0x00007fc04dd98000)

Solution

The system library that was missing in my system (using default installation of Ubuntu 9.04 64bit, Server edition) was libstdc++.so.5. This library is included in the package libstdc++5. It can be installed by running:

apt-get install libstdc++5

The RTC server has to be restarted afterwards.

jazz/server/ser­ver.shutdown jazz/server/ser­ver.startup

libstdc++.so.5

ERROR:
The required library file libstdc++.so.5 is not found on the system.

Solution: (thanks http://tldp.org/…fedora6.html)

yum -y install compat-libstdc++-33

libaio.so.1

ERROR:
The required library file libaio++.so.1 is not found on the system.

Solution:

yum -y install libaio