Re: change management software -- MIDRANGE-L

On Saturday, December 6, 2003, at 02:34 AM, CWilt@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Correct, you can have from 2 to 4 environments.  Production and
development along with an optional QA and/or Integration.  Could
you elaborate on the "even shadow sets of levels for versioning"
comment.  I don't understand what you mean by that.  Actually, I'm
having a hard time picturing why you'd want/need more than 4
environments.

Not wanting to enter this discussion too much but why would you want more than four environments? Simple: product development. It is very easy to have multiple levels when you have to separate code by version number and have separate fix levels for each version. Translated language support adds additional levels. Here are the hierarchies for two of our products:

Level  Group
 01    BUILD_370
 02      BUILD_410
 03        BUILD_420
 04          FIX_420
 05            BUILD_430
 06              BUILD_440
 07                BUILD_450
 08                  FIX_450
 09                    BUILD_510
 07                TEST
 08                  COLLECTOR
 09                    DEVGWEN
 09                    DEVSHC

Level  Group
 01    BUILD_100
 02      BUILD_120
 03        BUILD_121
 04          BUILD_122
 05            BUILD_123
 06              BUILD_130
 06              LANG2950_123
 06              TEST
 07                COLLECTOR
 08                  DEV_ADRIAN
 08                  DEV_DAVID
 08                  DEV_JOHN
 08                  DEV_SIMON
 05            FIX_122
 06              TEST_FIX
 07                DEV_FIX
 05            LANG2950_122

The above hierarchy also has support for language translation. When we translate the product into French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese we will need 8 more groups at each level. For example:

 05            BUILD_123
 06              LANG2928_123
 06              LANG2929_123
 06              LANG2931_123
 06              LANG2932_123
 06              LANG2950_123
 06              LANG2962_123
 06              LANG2986_123
 06              LANG2987_123
 06              LANG2989_123

Each new release will require a new production group, fix group, and associated language groups. Imagine the depth of this hierarchy after 10 years development.

The reason I am staying out of the discussion is because we use IBM's Application Development Manger (ADM) product for change management. I like it a lot but since it has been killed after 510 (and we need to handle stream files which ADM does not understand) I'm interested in the comments regarding the current crop of change management tools.

Regards,
Simon Coulter.
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