Artifacts

A typical software development lifecycle requires the development, evolution, and management of things other than source files such as requirements, models, graphics, change requests, schedules, tests, and so on. The term artifact refers to the generalization of objects that can be versioned, branched, merged, etc. StarTeam supports non-file artifact types directly, providing type-specific behavior for storage, versioning, merging and so forth. All artifacts are versioned, and some are branchable.

The built-in artifact types supported by StarTeam are summarized below:

Folder

Every view has one root folder, which typically has a tree of subfolders beneath it. Folders are patterned from the file system concept of directories. In many cases, you will want to create StarTeam folders that mirror specific directory structures. However, StarTeam folders can hold any kind of artifact, not just files. This concept may seem strange at first, but when you discover that you can organize change requests, tasks, and other non-file artifacts the same way you organize files, you will find this feature very powerful. Folders can branch, allowing the same folder to have different properties in each branch.

File

StarTeam allows you to store any kind of file: text or binary, authored or generated, small or very large. A few more features are provided for text files such as keyword expansion and EOL conversion, but all file types otherwise are treated identically. StarTeam allows single file revisions larger than 4GB. Files are branchable, allowing parallel version streams and merging.

Change Request

A change request (CR) is a general artifact that can represent a defect, enhancement request, or another reason for a software change. Because CRs are often the center of change management, the CR type is frequently extended with custom fields, custom GUI forms, and workflow rules. CRs can branch, allowing parallel modifications to the same CR for separate activities such as fixing the same defect in multiple releases. Using integration tools, you can import CRs from and keep them synchronized with other defect management systems.

Task

StarTeam tasks are modeled after project management tasks: they can be arranged hierarchically to represent task decomposition, they can be connected with predecessor/successor relationships, and they can be updated with progress units known as work records. You can import tasks from a project management system such as Microsoft Project, update and maintain them via StarTeam, and then synchronize them back to the original project source. In StarTeam, tasks are versioned but they do not branch.

Topic

A topic is very similar to a newsgroup message. Like newsgroup messages, topics can be organized into conversation threads. Because topics are artifacts, they are versioned (but not branched) and are stored in the repository with other artifacts. This allows you to capture more application lifecycle knowledge such as important discussions related to a design decision or a requirement approval.

Requirement

If you do not have a formal requirements management (RM) tool, StarTeam requirements provide a convenient, lightweight artifact with which requirements can be captured. Requirements can be arranged hierarchically to represent decomposition, and they can be linked to other artifacts. Since requirements are independently-versioned artifacts, they are more accessible than requirements buried in documents, which are versioned at the whole-document level. If you use a requirements management system such as Caliber, those “formal” requirements can be imported as StarTeam requirements and organized together with other lifecycle artifacts. We provide integration tools to import, synchronize, and even link artifacts between StarTeam and Caliber. Requirements do not branch.

Audit

An audit is a read-only change event artifact that is automatically generated for other artifact changes: add, modify, delete, move, label attach, link, etc. Because audits are automatically generated and immutable, they are not really artifacts per se, but StarTeam allows you to access them with similar GUI and SDK techniques as other artifacts, so you can think of them as read-only artifacts. The generation of audits and the length of time that they are retained are configurable.

These artifacts are all bundled with StarTeam, however you are not obligated to use them all. The code for each artifact type is encapsulated in a dynamically-loaded plug-in module called a server-side component (SSC). Each SSC is a code library suffixed with .ssc that resides in the StarTeam Server’s installation directory. If you rename an .ssc module before the server starts, the corresponding artifact type will not be used. For example, if you want to use StarTeam as a VCS only, just rename all *.ssc modules except for file.ssc.