1.    Protect R&D’s Most Valuable Asset

Business continuity is not just a buzzword. Time lost on fixing ClearCase problems wastes time, money and energy which directly affect the company’s bottom line.

ClearCheck implements:

• Accurate reports – covers all possible errors so you know whether VOBs are healthy or not, and if not, what is wrong with them.
• Preventive maintenance – identify and fix problems before they affect the work of end-users.

Many organizations experience 1-2 major ClearCase failures annually which may cost tens of thousands of dollars . Use our ROI Calculator to find out how much your organization stands to lose in case of a major failure.

Bottom line: high quality protection of a core asset – business continuity

2.    Save Time on a Routine Task

Checking that VOBs are functioning well takes a lot of time and effort:

• Study IBM’s recommendations for checks
• Master checking tools and implement checks
• Running checks takes an hour or more.

Working with ClearCheck ensures that the VOBs are always checked to the highest industry standard, no matter how busy the administrator team is.

Bottom line: the administrator can focus on core tasks – improved productivity

3.    Can’t you do it Yourself?

ClearCase administrators can develop in-house scripts that run checks automatically, but this process tends to be inefficient for several reasons:

• Result analysis: ClearCase checks create data, it takes an effort of several months to turn this data into readable information that will be useful in day-to-day operations.
• Maintenance: IBM constantly adds more checks and possibilities to its recommendations. Only a dedicated team can keep track and update the checks you run accordingly.
• Performance: at least some of the checks require downtime. ClearCheck keeps improving performance, and even allows running checks with no downtime in some situations.
• Resolution suggestions: ClearCheck recommends actions to solve each problems with links to IBM documentation based on an extensive knowledgebase.

Bottom line: less investment, better product – money saving

TestPro will be attending the IBM Innovation 2010 conference in Sydney on the 21st July 2010. TestPro  are representing GoMidjets and will have a stand where an attendee can come and discuss change management, testing and requirements.

TestPro’s Director, Scott Marchant will be presenting in the Quality stream about Automated Test Frameworks and their implementation on a client site.

The new ClearCheck version, V1.7, suggests a simpler procedure for installing ClearCheck in order to ensure that your ClearCase environment is healthy. It takes only 3 minutes to install and receive a preliminary report!

Here are the 4 steps to follow after you download ClearCheck (To download the latest version: http://gomidjets.com/download.php?did=1)

1. Select your VOB server access: local (for Windows server) or remote (for Linux or UNIX) server. In case of remote server, please enter hostname, account name that can access VOBs, password, press “apply”

Select server tab (click to enlarge)

2. Select the VOBs that you want to be checked

VOBs tab (click to enlarge)

3. Select a view tag (ClearCheck automatically recognizes all views) to be a view-context for “checkvob” test.

4. Press the “Execute checks now” button.

checkvob tab (click to enlarge)

Now ClearCheck will start working. Status messages will appear in the right bottom corner of your screen. Please be patient. The checks usually run for a few minutes, depending on the amount of VOBs that you’ve selected and their size.

After the checks are done, your browser will open automatically, displaying the final report. If any errors are found, there will be a blue highlighted line at the end of each error description, explaining how to solve the error. you will see a highlighted line at the end of each error, describing you how to solve that error.

After checks are done,  your browser will be opened automatically with the final report. If you find any error, you will see a highlighted line in blue at the end of the error, describing you how to solve that error.

That’s all!

Remember, it’s a preliminary report. In order to gain maximum effect of ClearCheck and ClearCase checks, please read the full manual (it’s part of your installation kit) or consult our support team: support@gomidjets.com

GoMidjets has managed to reach target audience in large enterprises through IBM’s DeveloperWorks network and social media, winning the Beacon Award for outstanding contribution to the developers community.

Rome, May 18th. Tamir Gefen, CEO of GoMidjets, won the IBM Beacon Award for outstanding contribution to DeveloperWorks, IBM’s network for developers and IT professionals. The marketing strategy of GoMidjets, a vendor specializing in IBM Rational plugins, focuses on reaching key position holders through social media and developing a highly targeted install base for its niche products.

“The company was founded in social media,” says Mr. Gefen. “Two years ago I opened a professional blog, as a way to share knowledge and connect to other professionals working with IBM products. One night I shared a script I wrote on my blog, and was amazed at how many people downloaded it with no other marketing except my blog post. It became clear that a good solution can get a wide audience through social media tools.”
GoMidjet’s clients are large enterprises who have a large R&D team. Reaching administrators and managers in such organizations is considered especially difficult through traditional marketing efforts. Yet GoMidjets has managed to reach an install base of thousands of users in organizations such as federal agencies, Oracle, Motorola, Thales, STMicroElectronics, Ness, Comverse and many more.
Today, GoMidjets markets its solutions in IBM DeveloperWorks, LinkedIn, Twitter, professional forums and is considering entering Facebook. The company has 2 active blogs in English: Tamir Gefen on ALM, and GoMidjet’s corporate blog.
“The key is to reach a very specific niche and work with the community to provide value,” Mr. Gefen explains, “we don’t just develop products and drop them into the marketplace. We listen to the pains of users and administrators, and use it as a starting point for new features and products. In this way we ensure that our plugins solve real problems for real people. We have also shared new features and beta versions with connections on social media, and the feedback has been invaluable.”

GoMidjets has developed three productivity plugins for IBM Rational ClearCase:
ClearEnv – Automatically installs development environments in ClearCase, with a special focus on  heterogeneous systems, Agile methodology, distributed environments, and more.
ClearCheck – Automatically checks database health in development environments, contributing to business continuity and risk mitigation.
CompBL – Advanced version comparison for better control of the R&D process and gathering Business Intelligence (BI) about development processes.
All products are seamlessly integrated with ClearCase environments, compliant with UNIX/ Linux and Windows, and certified by the IBM Innovation Lab.

About GoMidjets
GoMidjets provides products and services for configuration management (CM) and application life-cycle management (ALM). The company specializes in IBM Rational products and heterogeneous environments and recently won the IBM Beacon Award.
GoMidjets was founded in 2009 by Tamir Gefen, a recognized expert with over a decade of experience. Mr. Gefen managed CM and ALM projects at the Israeli Air Force, an international professional services company, and large enterprises.

Come see us live in the US and Italy

The summer is nearly here, and GoMidjets going on the road. We’re going to be at three major events over May and June.

If you would like to meet the people behind the ClearCase productivity plug-ins, ask for a meeting through this link, and we would love to meet you in person. We’re going to be attending:

• IBM Information on Demand 2010 conference, Rome Italy, May 19th-20th

• IBM Innovate 2010 conference, Orlando FL, June 6th-10th

• NY Roadshow, New York, June 14^th-16^th

Be in touch

If you’re going to be at any of these events or locations, we’d really love to meet up. Feel free to schedule a meeting: http://gomidjets.com/register_innovate

dbcheck is the most important maintenance check provides by IBM Rational. According to IBM, it covers about 80% of the corruptions that can occur.

ClearCheck and ClearCase enable you to run dbcheck in three ways:

1. Run it on the VOBs themselves
2. Run it on a VOBs backup copy that is stored on the VOB server or another server
3. Run it on a VOBs backup copy that is stored on a storage (filer) machine: NetApp, EMC Celerra, Sun storage, IBM etc.

The first way requires locking the VOBs for writing. That means that no one will be able apply changes while the dbcheck is running.
The other two ways do not require locking the VOBs, and are considered to be the best practices for avoiding VOBs downtime!

ClearCase dbcheck

To download trial version of ClearCheck: http://gomidjets.com/download.php?did=1

The Software and Services Department at the IBM Haifa Research Lab (HRL) in Israel, cordially invites you to a full-day seminar on Programming Languages and Development Environments (PLDE), to be held on Wednesday, April 14, 2010 .

The seminar will take place in the auditorium of the HRL site on the University of Haifa campus, from 9:00 to 17:30. Lunch and light refreshments will be served. Participation is free .

During the day, we, the GoMidjets team, will show our automated solutions for IBM Rational ClearCase, as well as demonstrating our solution for building work environments automatically, ClearEnv ( http://bit.ly/cnqv2w ), in one of the sessions.

Registration (by April 11):
https://www.research.ibm.com/haifa/Workshops/plde2010/index.shtml

Program: https://www.research.ibm.com/haifa/Workshops/plde2010/program.shtml

See you there!

On March 23^rd GoMidjets’ seminar “Accelerating development and CM processes by automation“ took host at IBM Israel.

The turn-out for the event was high.  In less than two days all the seats for the seminar were booked. This was achieved by using only selected social media platforms (and not all intentionally). 35 people signed up to the seminar and 26 attended in person, coming from various sectors and companies.

During the first part of the seminar I lectured on the topic of “Automation in development processes: why, when and how”. Presentation slides are available for download, but do not yet include the detailed explanations, which will be added soon to this blog. Sign up here for updates.

In the lecture, I used a practical example from the ClearCase world: a trigger that announces a new recommended baseline. That trigger combines all discussed issues.

The Presentation is available for download here: http://bit.ly/92PmY0

During the second part of the seminar we examined common problems in Rational ClearCase which can be solved with automation, and suggested our solutions for the following problems:

1. ClearCase VOBs health check
2. ClearCase environments installation
3. ClearCase Version comparison

To read about our solutions enter the links above.

To download presentation slides of the common ClearCase problems: http://bit.ly/9vy8VE

To follow up the last successful event we intend on organizing future professional seminars – sign up here for updates.

I’d like to thank the participants and all those who lent a hand, GoMidjets employees and IBM workers, to produce this event.

View photos from the seminar:

Automation Seminar

Automation seminar 2

Automation Seminar 3

Now that all our products have achieved the “Ready for IBM Rational software” validation, and we are often asked what this means, I’d like to take a moment to explain:

IBM grants this validation to specific Business Partner plug-ins and product integrations that meet Rational integration criteria. If you are looking for software that integrates with IBM Rational products and enables more effective software delivery and governance, based on enhanced collaboration, automation, and measurement capabilities, you can find it on Plug-in Central. All capabilities of the software lifecycle are covered including integrations to Rational products based on the Jazz technology platform for collaborative software delivery. Please see the  Ready for IBM Rational software site for further details: http://www-304.ibm.com/isv/rational/readyfor.html

Have you ever asked yourself what changes have been made since your  stream was rebased to the recommended baseline?

Sometimes you rebase your private stream to an integration stream or its recommended baseline. You complete the operation (or havn’t yet), sometimes it requires some merging, and then you encounter new problems: compilation is failed, new bugs or run time errors, build is broken and so on. Here’s a new approach of coping with that problem. The following solution assumes that you use CompBL, A ClearCase plug-in.

1. Lanuch CompBL and select “Two streams” and relevant PVOB
2. Select your integration stream (you may select the recommended baseline)
3. Select your private stream
4. Press “Get Report”

Relevant buttons are yellow-marked in the following screenshot:

CompBL: A Rebase situation

To get all change-set, choose “include versions” and specify your view.

That’s all procedure!

To download a trial version of CompBL: http://gomidjets.com/compbl