WordPressDash

Just downloaded and installed the WordPressDash dashboard widget to assist with adding content to this blog. First impressions are good and hopefully it will do exactly what it says on the tin.

The iMac has landed!

Welcome to planet Apple, the iMac has landed!

A spanking 20″ iMac, 2.4 GHz, 320MB HDD machine was delivered by a very nice man in a brown UPS uniform yesterday lunchtime. Just the activity of unpacking and setting up was an indulgent experience, the way in which these machines are packaged sets them apart from the vast majority of other computer manufacturers. Everything, even down to the cardboard and plastic packaging has been considered from a design perspective to look good whilst still fulfilling the required function.

This was only ordered on Tuesday lunchtime and was delivered less than 24 hours later. That’s impressive. I am sure this wouldn’t have been the case had any modifications from standard specification been required. In the short-term, the only upgraded required are memory and an external hard-disk (for backup purposes). However as Apple themselves charge an exhorbitant amount for memory, this has been purchased from Crucial.

Whilst I haven’t had much time to play with it yet, I have been extremely impressed so far. The screen makes everything look good, even the mediocre content! Prior to ordering I was very tempted to purchase some external speakers, however I’m glad I decided not to order immediately as the internal speakers are suprisingly good and more than adequate for my purposes.

This was delivered pre-installed with Mac OS X 10.4.x (Tiger) which I was somewhat suprised about. It did however ship with a Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) DVD in the box which I immediately upgraded to after completing the initial setup for Tiger. I also checked for and and installed all software updates prior to doing anything else significant.

As this is a desktop machine, I opted for the standard wired keyboard and mouse which I am impressed with so far. The new ultra-thin keyboard is suprisingly nice to type on, the only thing which took me by suprise was the position of the ‘@’ sign which occupies the same key as the ‘2′. I’m not sure whether this belies the american focus of Apple or whether this is a Mac specific trait.

Had a quick play with the Front Row software and first impressions are it is very good. How much it will be used on this machine, only time will tell. From what I saw I can imagine how this would be used via the Apple iTV device on a big-screen TV.

Impending iMac – come in planet Apple, do you read me?

I have been lusting agonising for a while over an Apple iMac as a replacement desktop computer for home. The last time a new computer was purchased in our household was 1998 (Pentium-II, 266Mhz) and we have managed on that and subsequently a second-hand (Pentium-III, 800MHz) Dell Optiplex which was purchased for £10, for the last 9 years. The Dell which is used as the main desktop is dual-booting between Windows XP and Debian GNU/Linux and is still used on a daily basis for all manner of tasks.

Unfortunately it just doesn’t cut it any more for anything which requires a serious amount of horsepower and as I now want to dabble with video editing etc. the time has come to take the plunge. In actual fact the time came about a year ago but as I had been tracking the developments in the iMac camp, and was aware of the ‘impending’ new hardware in the pipline and the new version of Mac OS X (Leopard), I was happy to delay until both of these had been released.

My rationale behind the decision to move to Apple was based primarily on a couple of factors, the first being that they are designed to work together as a cohesive whole, as opposed to a collection of discrete parts. Secondly as mentioned above I generally favour Linux due to the open-source nature and the ability to use a decent command line environment. I also like the separation between kernel space and user space processes which is something which just doesn’t happen under Windows. However I also have others within my family to consider and they tend to use Windows XP. I am therefore hoping that the introduction of Mac OS X will bring something that will satisfy both camps, the simplicity of something which just works and gives an enjoyable and useful windowing environment with the power and elegance of a Unix-based core under the covers.

Based on all this I am therefore on the cusp of ordering a new aluminium iMac Core 2 Duo. Whilst I initially favoured the 24″ when the new prices were announced, I have accepted that this is just too big for the environment into which it is to reside and am happy to compromise for the 20″ model, I will however go for the better of the two 20″ models which comes with 2.4GHz processor, 320GB HDD and 256 MB ATI Radeon 2600 Pro graphics card. At this stage the only upgrade I am planning to do is to bump the memory up to 2GB.

Macro errors working in offline documents within RequisitePro

When working in offline documents and RequisitePro you may experience macro errors relating to security when using the context-sensitive (right-click) menu and working with requirements. These may occur when selecting the ‘Requirement Properties’ or ‘New Requirement’ options from the context-sensitve menu after clicking on a requirements.

This is apparently caused by corruption within the normal.dot template and should be fixed by removing all instances of this from the computer and causing this to be regenerated. The following IBM technote describes this.

Once this has been done these menu options should no longer appear on the context menu.

Configuring RequisitePro to support discussions via email

RequisitePro contains functionality to support threaded discussions and additionally to allow these discussions to use email as the transport for delivering notification of updates to participants. This can be a useful mechanisms for tracking conversations/debates when clarifiying requirements particularly when working with remote users.

Having started investigating this this requires that project security be setup and that each user is configured with an email address. It seems to require some configuration to associate a project with a mailbox and define the email address associated with the project itself and additionally requires a small amount of configuration on the end-user client machine specifically for an end-user.

The following link has some additional instructions for doing this.

http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21119385

Working with offline documents using RequisitePro

When using RequisitePro for requirements management and you are working within a document view you would normally work in an online mode. This gives you access to the full functionality of the tool and allows you to easily switch between the document view and the database view. Also within this mode saving the document will immediately update the database and assign new requirement tags appropriately.

However when planning to work away from the office you also have the ability to take documents ‘offline’. This allows you to have access to a subset of the RequisitePro functionality without having established connectivity. Working in offline mode you have the ability to create requirements within the document and when the document is brought back online to reflect the changes to the document back within the database.

As RequisitePro implements some of the Microsoft Word functionality as Word macros this requires that macros be enabled. The default setting is for ‘high security’ and this in effect disables all macros. Therefore when using RequisitePro it is recommended this security level be set at medium and this will therefore prompt the user as to whether the macros should be enabled or not. For offline document authoring these macros should be enabled to give the user access to the RequisitePro functionality.

Integrating RequisitePro and Rational Software Architect

When using the Rational software development tools to perform requirements management there is a potential source of confusion as to what tool to use when and a perceived overlap of functionality. This is more so when using a use-case orientated approach (as opposed to a traditional prose declarative document approach) to specifying functional requirements. By what method should use-cases be documented and how should this information be represented?

Having looked at this and used these tools recently the following would be my recommendations as to how to effectively use these tools in a use-case orientated project.

RequisitePro is a requirements management tool, it is not a general document management tool and is therefore generally used to stored only those artifacts which are products of the ‘Requirements’ discipline. Rational Software Architect (RSA) is a modelling tool but can be used to manage a use-case model and this model can have external non-modelling artifacts associated (and linked) with it.

Given that the requirements being managed can be broken down into

• Stakeholder Requests
• Features
• Software Requirements

and that software requirements themselves can be further broken down (in a use-case based project) into

• Functional (Use-Cases and Supplementary)
• Non-Functional (Supplementary)

Then the overlap in this context is where is the use-case based information managed. The use-case information tends to manifest itself as use-case diagrams (model elements) and use-case specifications (documents).

Based on my experience the best way to manage this information is for the textual requirements information (e.g. Stakeholder Requests, Features and Software Requirements – including any Use Case Specifications) to be managed within RequisitePro and this can therefore be used to track changes and establish traceability between elements. The model disgrams and elements (including actors, use-cases and relationships) are best managed within RSA.

With the above the understanding the question becomes one of, how best to link these to ease navigation and establish traceability. Assuming that the stakeholder requests and features have already been captured within RequisitePro and a project respository exists then this can be linked to from withi RSA. Following a UML model and associated project having been created within RSA open the ‘Requirement Explorer’

- Window->Show View->Requirement Explorer

This will open a new window within the RSA framework, then select the button entitled ‘Open a RequisitePro Project’ and browse to the relevant *.rqs file associated with the RequisitePro project

e.g. \\{path to project share}\TestProject\TestProject.rqs

If security has been enabled on the project this will require you to login using a username/password. Once the project is open you can link requirements to model elements by dragging the requirement from the ‘Requirements Explorer’ to the desired model element within the ‘Model Explorer’.

Once this traceability has been established then you can select either element within the respective view and trace to the corresponding element from the context-sensitive menu. Equally the details are shown in the ‘Requirements Trace’ view.

To PVR or not to PVR – that is ‘a’ question

Not necessarily ‘the’ question though!

Having survived up until now with standard analogue television (5 terrestrial channels) and a standard CRT set, I have started to consider whether to delve into the world of digital TV and also splash out on a new flat-panel set. Unfortunately these things always seem to suffer from scope creep and I would also like to replace my VHS video recorder. To my mind, based on the rationale of garbage-in/garbage-out it makes more sense to me to upgrade the signal and then replace the presentation (i.e. TV). Therefore this lends weight to the decision to replace the VHS video recorder with something that can also decode the Freeview digital signal.

The devices I have so far come across which seem to match my requirements are the Sony RDR-HDX860, Humax 9200 and Topfield 5800. The latter two being digital PVR machines and the Sony being what seems to be termed a ‘Hybrid’ device which correlates to a PVR and DVD Recorder.

Uninstalling Rational Software Architect v6.x on Windows XP

When uninstalling IBM Rational Software Architect v6.x under Windows XP you may receive errors and be unable to complete due to the lengths of the file paths. This is covered in the following support article on the IBM web site

The answer, for me, was to use the subst command from a command prompt and map a drive to a folder within the directory tree. This problem is due to the highly nested structure of the folders within the installation locastion and therefore the subst command has to be peformed at a level which is at a sufficient depth to avoid this problem. For me the following was sufficient.

C:\ subst U: "C:\Program Files\IBM\Rational\SDP\6.0\updater\workspace\proxies\eclipse\features"
C:\ rmdir /s updater.rwd_shared.plugins.6011.ifix001_1.0.0

This allegedly only affect those installs which have had the v6.0.1.1 update applied.