Automation of The Build Process of An Integrated Information System

Automated Build Manager is and automated build and release management tool that automates the whole build process - from retrieving source files from a version control system, to building the final release and creating distribution packages. It automates the most time consuming and critical stages of builds management process helping to avoid inconsistencies by limiting the amount of manual intervention required and eliminating of misplaced work.

Automating builds of a modular information system may significantly reduce the time required to release period the new versions of the system and to enhance their quality substantially.  The automated system build process results in:

• Enhanced build quality process due to structuring of development processes, use of new features offered by the later versions of IBM Rational ClearCase (2003 or higher) and creation of a centralized build workbench;
• Reduced build time due to a set of build scripts for systematization and subsequent automation of the build process which run on the centralized build workbench and form a release repository;
• Increased build security due to a regulated build process, establishing and implementation of build artifact access policy based on ClearCase properties;
• Timely reports to the managers of the build process and results of subsystem builds;
• Preparation of build results stored in the version repository for automated testing (walk-through tests). Reduced costs of producing the test object and shorter testing time, substantial quality enhancement of the resulting system due to the increased number of system test run iterations.

Build process automation is based on the configuration management process. When the customer has already implemented the configuration management process using an earlier version of IBM Rational ClearCase, it is upgraded to ClearCase 2003 or a higher version.