Software Management in the CA IDMS Environment › Promotion Management

Promotion Management

Promotion Management is the process wherein entities are moved from environment to environment within the software development life cycle. When these environments consist of multiple dictionaries, application development typically involves staged promotions of entities from one dictionary to another, such as Test to Quality Assurance to Production. This movement can be in any direction, from a variety of sources.

During Promotion Management, entities are copied from a Source data dictionary to a Target data dictionary. Unlike stand-alone migrators which treat migration as a separate function, CA Endevor/DB provides full promotion management support by integrating quality assurance and audit functionality with the migration process.

In order to successfully move an entity from one environment to another, a number of key questions must first be addressed:

• Exactly what needs to be promoted?
• Are there configuration dependencies which need to be resolved prior to promotion?
• How can concurrent updates be prevented?
• What impact will this promotion have on the target environment?
• Are there developmental differences which need to be resolved prior to the promotion?
• How can regression be prevented while migration is in progress?
• How is it possible to determine if the promotion is successful?

CA Endevor/DB addresses these concerns through four integrated release management facilities:

1. Selection/ Verification
2. Correlation
3. Migration
4. Confirmation

   

How It Works: 1. By examining change log entries, the Selection/Verification facility produces a list of those entities (and only those entities) that should be released or promoted. 2. The Correlation facility expertly determines the impact of the promotion by identifying potential regression situations at the target system. 3. The Migration facility transports the entities to the target system. 4. The Confirmation facility completes the cycle by sending confirmation information back to the source system.

These facilities, in conjunction with the Dynamic Change Monitor and the Change Control Database, ensure accurate promotions while eliminating many of the time-consuming, manual tasks currently associated with CA IDMS Release Management.

CA Endevor/DB's Selection/Verification facility automatically produces a promotion candidate list based on your selection criteria and the change log information in the CCDB. Only those entities that have actually been modified in the source system since the last promotion to the target system are initially eligible for inclusion on this list. As an added quality assurance measure, the Selection/Verification facility determines dictionary configuration dependencies and incomplete development activities relating to selected entities.

The criteria used to select entities for promotion include CCIDs, users, status codes, management groups and date/time ranges. Entities in the candidate list can be signed out automatically at promotion time by the CA Endevor/DB Verification processor to protect selected entities against unintended changes until the promotion process is complete. For this reason, selected entities remain signed out until they are received on the target system and confirmation is sent back to the source system, at which point they are automatically signed in.