Why R&D Reporter?

R&D Reporter (https://www.almtoolbox.com/rnd) is a ClearCase add-on tool that provides development status reports, metrics and charts.
We’re often asked what makes our R&D Reporter for ClearCase so special and why it’s better than in-house scripting.
Here is a list of the unique value proposition of R&D Reporter (feel free to share with your boss and colleagues):

1. Seamlessly integrated with ClearCase UCM.
   R&D Reporter’s queries, metrics and charts are based on the real ClearCase context: Streams, baselines, components, activities, views, file elements, file versions and code lines.
   For instance: you can easily compare two streams or two baselines and get the differences, including the correlation to relevant ClearCase objects (e.g. file versions to UCM activities and vice versa) – this is much more powerful and give you greater traceability that just comparing two folders.
2. Diversity of queries and reports.
   There are more than 30 combinations of reports you can get with just a few mouse clicks. It’s very easy to set a query and you can save the queries for future use and for automation.
3. A variety of unique and sophisticated reports and charts. See some example:
   1. Lines of Code (LOC) including relative LOC metrics. Read a white paper.
   2. Multiple pending change-sets
   3. Two composite baselines comparison
   4. Detect “missing” files: renamed, moved and removed files
   5. Two UCM views comparison
   6. Full view report
   7. Comparing two recommended baselines
4. Rich graphic user interface (GUI).
   This tool provides a live report to screen so you can launch ClearCase commands from within the context menu, such as Version Tree, ClearCase History and more. Additionally, you can sort, move, hide or print data just like you use Excel sheets.
5. Command-line interface (CLI).
   You can fully automate your queries and trigger them when necessary. You can also integrate them with your environment, scripts and 3rd-parties like Jenkins, Visual Studio, build and testing tools.
6. Easily share reports with relevant stakeholders:
   you can export reports and charts in many formats, including CSV, XML, Excel (XLS), Word, PDF and more
7. High quality performance!
   ClearCase may work slowly sometimes, thus calling to ClearCase database to retrieve data must be done in a very effective way. R&D Reporter applies the best practices of calling ClearCase data in order to give you the optimal performance when producing the reports. For instance, we use internal cache and smart commands to get the most efficient results (in terms of CPU time and memory).
8. Customized Excel and MS-Word as per your needs.
   We have the capability to transform our default reports to look like your current reports, including tables, formulas, fonts, colors, charts etc. (this feature requires our professional services and is available at an extra charge).
9. Built by developers that really understand ClearCase, ClearQuest, RTC, SCM processes and DevOps.
   This helps us provide a high quality product, as well as providing complementary services when needed by users.
10. IBM-Informed:
    we built the tool together with the ClearCase chief architect (from IBM) and ClearCase product manager in order to get the best performance.
11. Support and updates:
    we provide on-going support when you purchase a license. We have a support team ready to assist you by email, phone and webcasts, and users can open as many tickets as they need. Also, product releases are always aligned to releases of ClearCase ClearQuest products.
12. Smart filters that apply ClearCase and SCM best practices:
    you can easily filter out irrelevant files (by names or modified dates), irrelevant UCM activities and file versions and more.
13. Integrated with our Visual Annotate add-on tool for ClearCase.
    You can launch the annotating tool from within the R&D reports and track your code-lines history from this unique perspective (who checked-in each code line; when, where it was delivered from and so forth). Watch an example of Visual Annotate:
    
14. Charts (see examples on attached white paper).
    You can also automatically generate charts and integrate them with dashboards like RTC’s and JIRA’s.
15. Coming soon (in V5.0): alerting, email notifications and smart triggers, based on metrics and threshold which are generated by the R&D reports.
16. Coming soon (in V5.0): supporting UNIX, Linux and users of ClearTeam Explorer (CTE).
17. The reporter tool was tested on IBM innovation labs and was certified as “Ready for IBM Rational”.
    
18. The tool was recommended by the ClearCase ClearQuest product manager: “I’m continuously impressed by the ability of GoMidjets to fill a gap between the core functionality provided by ClearCase and the needs of our customers.”

Not convinced yet? See all of the other features and benefits of R&D Reporter V4:

Do you have questions about R&D Reporter? Send email to rnd@almtoolbox.com