A.1 View Profiles and UCM

Base ClearCase includes a set of features called view profiles, which you can use to automate much of the work required to set up and maintain your team's shared Rational ClearCase configuration. The Unified Change Management (UCM) process provides a more complete solution for organizing software development teams. If you currently use view profiles, you may want to move to UCM.

Feature Comparison

This section compares the features of view profiles and UCM.

Branches and Streams

In UCM, the project and its integration stream take the place of the view profile. Views attached to the integration stream are configured to select the project's shared integration branch, just as a view profile's config spec selects a shared common branch.

In view profiles, developers can work independently by setting up private branches for development work. In UCM, team members join a project at which time they create their own development work areas. A development work area consists of a development stream and a development view.

Moving Work Among Branches or Streams

When working on a private branch in view profiles, there is no automated way to incorporate changes from other developers onto the private branch. In UCM, developers use the rebase operation to update their development work areas with the latest work delivered by other developers to the integration stream and incorporated into a baseline.

In view profiles, developers finish a private branch when they complete a task. Finishing a private branch closes that branch and merges work to the integration branch, where it is merged with other sources. In UCM, activities record the versions that you create to complete a development task as change sets. The deliver operation moves activities from the development stream to the integration stream or a feature-specific development stream. Your development stream remains in place after a deliver operation, and you can continue to work in it.

VOBS and Components

View profiles contain a list of VOBs that hold project data. UCM projects organize directory and file elements into components, and each stream keeps a list of components.

Checkpoints and Baselines

View profiles capture stable configurations of a project with checkpoints, a set of labeled versions. UCM uses baselines, which capture a set of versions per component.

Table 5 summarizes the key differences between view profiles and UCM features.