January 2006 Volume 10, Number 1

TurnOver’s Synchronizer Coordinates Custom Code and New Releases

By Jason Rubenstein, Consultant

So your software vendor comes out with a new release, and now you must add the new code to your already-modified package. Or your offshore team in India, Ukraine, or the International Space Station has delivered its set of system enhancements, and it is time to fit your day-to-day changes and their new functionality into one set of code. Or you have two teams of programmers working on the same set of programs: one performing support and maintenance, and the other enhancing the system to new and greater heights. You get the idea. You have two (or more) routes of modification, one set of source code, and the requirement to fit one set of changes into the other.

This can appear to be a daunting task. What do you do? An old adage says, “When with question or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.” This is, however, not a productive pastime. There is a better way. Did you know that TurnOver’s Synchronizer can play an active role in synchronizing your source code from separate paths of source code modifications? Using Synchronizer will save you time and effort, and it will organize programmers’ and managers’ work using — among other things — tried-and-true TurnOver Programmer Worklists and Forms.

Merging a new release, changes, or your own custom modifications with other changes requires expert coordination. The process for you, however, can be quite easy. With distinct phases, Synchronizer supports the entire process from the point at which you load the newly delivered changes into a holding library, through distribution and installation. An On-Line Checklist guides you through the entire synchronization process!

Synchronizer, Step by Step

Let’s look at these phases. In the first phase, you build a change impact file. Synchronizer compares the new source and objects with the old version and your modifications, and it stores the results in the change impact file.

Once it is built, you can analyze the change impact file using the Work with Impact File panels and by running various Impact Analysis Reports. To aid your analysis, you can view or print program source and source compare output; and you can quickly view your object and project history to remember your reasons for your custom changes.

One great feature of Synchronizer’s Source Compare and Merge is that, once a source compare has been run — and as long as none of the members compared have changed — the presentation, reporting, and merge steps take just a few seconds, no matter how big your programs.

The objective of the analysis phase is to identify all of the objects you modified that require revisions to make them work with the vendor’s new objects.

The analysis phase ends when you partition the big list into smaller ones, called Programmer Worklists, and assign each to the programmer responsible for working on them. Each programmer will code and test changes and then, depending on your environment, promote them to a consolidated test environment for further testing, before installing all of the changes and the new base into production.

After you test all of the changes together, Synchronizer coordinates the promotion of all the objects — those you changed along with the vendor’s new base — into production. These promotions, often run as several independent jobs, are grouped to ensure that they are all run together. If one fails for any reason, all can be held and, if necessary, backed out.

How do you manage all of this activity? The change impact file and its Work with panels provide the means to keep it all straight. And the On-Line Checklist guides you through the entire synchronization project.

TurnOver’s Synchronizer can play a very active role in the successful merge of multiple versions of code, without the “running in circles and shouting” approach. It coordinates the synchronization process, groups the details of the process into distinct phases, and assists you in assigning manageable pieces of work to separate programmers. You can then use the robust TurnOver Change Management software to promote and distribute your complete and merged code. An otherwise potentially overwhelming task is made simpler by letting the Synchronizer software do much of the heavy lifting and detailed coordination.

Back to Table of Contents

WHAT'S NEW