This tutorial covers 2 topics.   The first is XML searching of assets.  Many of the assets customers manage often contain XML artifacts.  RAM indexes a variety of artifacts so you that can search for them based on their contents.   Some examples of the supported artifact types are XML, Microsoft PPT, Visio, Excel, Adobe PDF and many more.  In the versions prior to RAM v7.1.1, you could search on a term like “carlos” and select the search option”within artifacts” and RAM would return all assets that had artifacts that include the term “carlos”.  The challenge is what if there were 100’s of assets that had “carlos”?  In RAM V7.1.1 you can add index rules that will allow you to search by providing additional criteria like find “support person”=”carlos”  where support person is an XML element or attribute that is in the xml artifacts and has the value carlos.    This doesn’t require you to specify an asset attribute but rather an XML element value in the an asset attribute that RAM will look for in an asset artifact.  This is a very powerful feature especially for customers who are using RAM to manage their software models or other XML based assets. This ensures you find the assets you are looking for.

The second topic covered in this tutorial is how to share assets with your supply chain or more broadly.   Most people share assets by sharing the component or document.  What this approach lacks is the context, understanding or common language for how these assets are used, work together or the level of quality or compliance the assets have.  By being able to share the asset governance model that defines how these assets can be used and work together, you add another level of usability and value to the individual assets.  This ensures the assets you provide and receive are consumable and provide value.    RAM v7.1.1 added the ability to create asset libraries.

Watch this tutorial on the Rational Asset Manager Exchange to see how to create XML search rules and package or create asset libraries and their corresponding governance models.  Our hope is customers will begin to create their own asset governance models for different domains like the previous one we have shared for Maven.   Customers can share these asset libraries on the Rational Asset Manager Exchange so that others can jump start their asset management initiatives for different domains within their organization.  We use Maven as an example since this is domain where we have some customers using RAM to visualize and govern their maven component dependencies .


Automate Asset Creation

March 13, 2009

An important factor for ensuring the assets you create are used is to apply the necessary metadata so that they are found. Asset consumers often don’t take the time to properly fill in all the appropriate attributes or assign the appropriate categories. As a result these assets may not be found when people search for them. This results in duplicate assets and wasted work. Also, incorrectly categorized assets may not get the appropriate review, which can result in rework by teams who try to use the defective asset.

This tutorial shows how XML artifacts can be used to assign asset attributes and categories so that you can automate asset submission for any domain area. In the demonstration we show how RAM can automatically assign asset attribute values and categories by introspecting the asset XML artifacts.  The example focuses on Apache Maven components. Component consumers can then submit Maven components to the repository faster, find them faster and have a graphical view of the dependencies and component metadata.

This Webcast presentation and demonstration on the Rational Asset Manager Exchange part 1 shows  how RAM v7.1.1.1 can automate asset submission for assets that have an XML Artifact, like assets for Maven.  Download the demonstration Maven Asset Library and try it out yourself with your own Maven components.

Part 2 of the Webcast shows step by step directions for administrators to setup automated asset submission for Rational Asset Manager.  The zip file a also includes the presentation used in the Webcast.