18.1 Setting Up an Individual User's View

In a typical ClearCase development environment, most views are created by individual developers on their own workstations for their own use. If a user's workstation has local storage, it makes sense for the user's views to reside in that storage. Alternatively, you can place the storage for some or all views on a file server host. In either case, view storage must be backed up regularly. There may be important view-private files, including checked-out files, in the view that do not exist in VOB storage.

In deciding where to place views, keep in mind these architectural constraints:

• Each view has an associated server process, its view_server, which executes on the host where the view's storage directory is created.

• Rational ClearCase must be installed on the host where a view storage directory is created and the view_server process runs.

• If a host is to keep several views (and their several view_server processes) active concurrently, it must be configured with more main memory.

View Storage Requirements

Each ClearCase view is associated with a view storage directory, a directory tree that holds a database, along with a private storage area. In a dynamic view, the private storage area contains view-private files, checked-out versions of elements, and unshared derived objects. In a snapshot view, the private storage area does not contain data; copies of versions and files that are not under ClearCase control reside in the snapshot view directory tree, not in the view storage directory.

View Database

The view database is a set of ordinary files, located in subdirectory .db of the view storage directory.

View's Private Storage Area

A view's private storage area is implemented as a directory tree named .s in the view storage directory. On UNIX computers, .s is an actual subdirectory, so that all data stored in the view occupies a single disk partition.

When deciding where to create view storage for a dynamic view, consider that nonshareable and unshared derived objects typically make the greatest storage demand on the view. To obtain a useful estimate of the maximum disk space required for a view, calculate the total size of all the binaries, libraries, and executables for the largest software system to be built in that view. If several ports (or other variants) of a software system will be built in the same view, it must be able to accommodate the several kinds of binaries.

For a snapshot view, the snapshot view directory must be located on a partition with enough space to accommodate all copies of versions loaded into the view as well as all file-system objects in the view that are not under ClearCase control. The view storage directory may or may not reside within the snapshot view directory. The view storage directory must reside on a ClearCase host that is configured to run view_server processes. You may use one or more such ClearCase hosts as central locations for snapshot view storage directories.