iCTeam RAP Migration - Case Study from BOSCH

This post is an example of how a complex RCP application can be easily adapted for the web by single sourcing it with RAP. Bosch India has single-sourced its desktop product iCTeam with RAP in order to provide end customers with easy web access and a consistent experience across desktop and web. As a result, the system is now fully web-enabled and approximately 70% of the code is shared with RCP.

About iCTeam

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) system approach improves quality, breaks down barriers between teams through collaboration and enhances efficiency. With its advanced ALM solution - iCTeam (Integrated Collaborative Toolchain for Engineering Application Lifecycle Management).

iCTeam is based on OSEE - the Open System Engineering Environment solution from The BOEING Company. OSEE is an integrated, extensible tool environment for large engineering projects. BOEING is using OSEE for development of APACHE and AH6 series of helicopters.While OSEE supports compliance to DO-178B, iCTeam supports compliance to ASPICE and ISO 26262 standards.

Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions provides its clients end to end process and tooling support for system engineering requirements. This Eclipse based solution is loaded with advanced features for lean engineering needs. It has an extensible architecture and multi-tier framework. With the unmatched experience of Bosch in the automotive industry, Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions has acquired the ability to deliver tailor-made products for the unique requirements of automotive industry. With its years of work in this domain customers get various features in iCTeam such as Model based development support, Product Line Engineering support, Dependency management support, software sharing support, Safety compliance support and Calibration workflow support with collaborative features for distributed development. iCTeam enhances engineering efficiency by managing project complexity, providing traceability from requirements through the entire software development lifecycle, monitoring project progress, and achieving predictable delivery. It also provides customizable workflow for adapting to any development processes.

iCTeam Architecture & Technology – a glance

My team from Bosch India has extensive know-how on Eclipse based application development (RCP, RAP, e4, BIRT, etc). iCTeam is an application based on Eclipse platform which offers a wide degree of flexibility / adaptations as shown below.

iCTeam, initially a RCP-standalone application, was a success and had huge market acceptance among ALM users across geographies. With an amplified increase in the number of ALM users there was a need for iCTeam to have a web client for better and easy access across geographies and platforms. Web enabling iCTeam would have been a tough challenge - like walking on penrose stairs, had the team chosen the migration strategy in the path of J2EE / .asp, due to the effort involved in redesigning screens and core architecture. Instead the team chose more efficient way – single sourcing to RAP.

How to Web-enable iCTeam RCP?

Eclipse RAP being a matured framework provides a powerful widget toolkit such as OSGI and JEE. It offered an opportunity to my team to perform a single sourcing migration to web platform. My team from Bosch India has leveraged RAP for its ALM product iCTeam and iCTeam is also an example of how a complex RCP application can be easily adapted to RAP by single sourcing. My team had successfully performed single sourcing (approx. 70%) to RAP 2.0 which was appealing to the end customers. However, there was also a need for several enhancements like “File-upload by Drag & Drop”, “Improved Row Templates” and several other solutions which was answered by migration to RAP 2.3 which met our needs.

iCTeam adapted in RAP consists of Eclipse frameworks like OSEE, e4 CSS Styling, EMF, ZEST, CNF, FORMS, Viewers, Wizards, Dialogs and Editors.

Next Roadmap: After successful migration to RAP 2.3, we find that there is room for improvement in performance, for which RAP 3.0 would provide a suitable answer in terms of boosting performance improvements.

The below screen prints depict the story of successful migration from RCP to RAP.

Migration to RAP

Task Dashboard

iCTeam Task dashboard provides functionality of viewing list of tasks for a selected project in the dashboard; it offers flexibility for table customization and provides a detailed overview of activities in progress. The below screenshots showcase the task dashboard in RCP and RAP mode.

RCP Variant:

RAP (WebClient) Variant:

Sky Walker (Traceability)

iCTeam Sky Walker provides a graphical visualization of relations / linkage between different artifacts like Requirements artifact, Design artifact, Code artifact and test artifact. The below screenshots showcase Sky Walker in RCP and RAP mode.

RCP Variant:

RAP (WebClient) Variant:

About RBEI

RBEI is a 100% subsidiary of Robert Bosch GmbH established in 1998, with 15,000 plus associates. RBEI is headquartered in Bangalore, has development centers in India, Vietnam and Mexico with established sales offices in Germany, USA, UK and Japan. With 2014 turnover of some 385 million euros, RBEI is also a frontrunner in patent generation and quality products for enhancing engineering efficiency.

About Engineering Methods and Tools

Engineering Methods and Tools is an Eclipse based tools solution provider which offers Eclipse and project specific tooling solution to different global players. With 12 plus years and 1000 plus hours of experience in Eclipse technology, my team of 300 plus engineers offer high value Eclipse services in different fields of Eclipse technologies like RCP development (e3 , e4) , Migration support (RCP to RAP, e3 to e4), BIRT support, SCADA, iOT etc.

Author:

For further information on RAP migration and detailed overview kindly contact Rahul Chandrashekar [email protected] +91 (080) 6757-3071

References:

https://eclipse.org/osee/ https://eclipse.dev/modeling/emf/ https://eclipse.dev/rap/incubator/ /blogs/tag/single-sourcing/ https://www.eclipse.dev/rap/noteworthy/2.3/