Overview of ClearCase

This seminar is designed for engineers and managers who have little or no experience with ClearCase. After attending this seminar you will have a good understanding of what ClearCase is and what problems it can address. You will understand how to use branches with a baseline lable and why. You will understand how ClearCase solves and avoids problems that arise when more and more engineers work together on the same files.

The seminar includes these topics:

• What Problems Are Being Addressed?
• Version Control, Branches and Elements
• VOBs, Views and Cspecs
• Projects and Baselines
• Management of Working Contexts
• Project and Merge Strategies
• Codeline Access
• Process Control
• Build Avoidance
• Essential ClearCase commands

This seminar was the basis for the new, online Learn ClearCase course.

ClearCase Project Concepts

This seminar is the most popular and well attended of the Timefold seminars. It builds on the foundation knowlege of the Overview of ClearCase seminar, and completes the essential strategic understanding of ClearCase.

In this seminar many of Howard Cohen's best strategies for branching and merging are revealed. You'll learn about four distinctly different branching models and their relative efficiency in terms of merging. You'll learn about how to pick up changes for free -- without merging. You'll learn the difference between parallel development and parallel releases. You'll learn dozens of strategies for branching and merging in terms engineers and managers can understand. You'll learn the difference between merge errors and coding errors. You'll learn what kinds of coding maneuvers interfere with merging. The seminar will also explain how to assess the complexity of merges. It incudes specific strategies for performing merges that avoid problems and make the best use of limited expert resources. The seminar covers these topics:

• Concurrent Development: Mechanics, Dynamics and Strategies
• Parallel Development: Mechanics, Dynamics and Strategies
• Checkpoints
• Branching Strategies
• Merge Assessment and Strategies
• Reparenting Projects

This seminar is the basis for the new, online Branch & Merge course, which is still under development.

ClearCase Policy Implementation Strategies

This seminar is designed for engineers and managers who are contributing to software process improvement, or policy definition and implementation using ClearCase.

Being an agent of change in an engineering organization is one of the most challenging positions anywhere in the organization.

Even more challenging than the technology requirements of changing CM systems without interfering with existing workflows are the sometimes daunting requirements of getting people to "buy into" the change and work constructively with the people implementing the change. The human side of the equation can sometimes be a lot harder than the technology.

The seminar includes an effective process you can follow to gain support at all levels for any infrastructure improvement. You'll learn to enlist support by means of the requirements collection process.

Your engineering technology specialists will learn about the sensitivities of their customers and how to win support through quality service. They'll learn the value and the practical steps of requirements analysis in engineering infrastructure. They'll develop the right infrastructure, based on those requirements and that will reduce the overall cost in time and dollars of engineering.

The seminar also covers four different kinds of policies, with real-world examples that show how and why they are used. It helps to classify policies so that they can be implemented and controlled in a consistent manner.

The seminar explains how to create effective policies using ClearCase triggers that:

• Do not interfere with each other
• Can be turned on and off for each project or branch
• Are immune to trigger-firing-order problems
• Are based on a concise, centralized infrastructure base

You'll learn how to effectively manage:

• Meta-data including branch and lable types, triggers, attributes and hyperlinks.
• Projects, branches and baselines
• Cspecs (Configuration Specifications)
• Infrastructure and Engineering tools

Here's an outline of the seminar:

• Introducing Policy and Infrastructure Changes
• A Process for Infrastructure Change, including:
  • Making a Financial Argument for Infrastructure Changes
  • Surveying Users
  • Requirements Analysis
  • Implementation and Rollout Plans
• Policy Implementation Strategies
• Kinds of Policies, including simple examples of:
  • Process Shepherding
  • Access Control
  • Entry/Exit Criteria
  • Automatic Communications
• Policy Interactions
• Project-specific policies
• Ongoing process improvement

Note: the portion in bold font was presented at the 1995 ClearCase International User's Group Conference. You can download a copy of this presentation if you want a sample of the course materials.

Advanced ClearCase Administration

This seminar is designed for engineers and system administrator's who must plan and implement ClearCase for any size organization. This seminar includes many technical tips, rules of thumb, and key information which can help avoid costly mistakes.

The course focuses on Unix systems, but most of the information is relevant to NT-based ClearCase implementations as well.

Each engineering environment is different and system administrators typically have questions specific to their environment. This seminar includes plenty of time for open Q & A and brainstorming to help address your organization's needs. System administrators will appreciate the opportunity to learn about the requirements ClearCase places on their network and hosts, and how to avoid common mistakes that make ClearCase run slowly or with unnecessary risk.

This class is also appropriate for Infrastructure engineers so they understand the issues that concern system administrators, and so they have common concepts and a language to communicate with them about issues and problems that invariably arise in any ClearCase implementation.

You'll also learn important strategies for optimizing NFS traffic, avoiding bottlenecks, which resources are most important for improving performance, different alternatives and their advantages and disavantages for backups of views and vobs, and different uses for vob replication.

This class is highly recommended for any organization planning or undertaking a large-scale ClearCase implementation. Arm your system administrators with the knowledge they require to provide top-quality service. Your partners in the effort to succeed with ClearCase deserve this key information.

The seminar includes these topics:

• ClearCase Hosts
• Conserving Network Bandwidth, including:
  • Optimizing ClearText and DO access
  • NFS
  • Accessing views on Non-ClearCase Hosts
  • Automounters
• VOB Management
• View Management
• Registries and Regions
• VOB Replication
• Minimizing Dependencies
• Safe Handling of lost+found