A Configuration Control and Software Management System for Distributed Multiplatform Software Development

E. Huygen
K.U.Leuven

B. Vandenbussche
K.U.Leuven

Session ID: P7.02   Type: poster

Abstract:

Since the Interactive Analysis System (IA) for the reduction of ISO-SWS data was done at several institutes and on different platforms, there was a need to control this development over the network. Therefore a client/server application (CoCo) was developed in the Perl programming language. The server is a daemon that constantly checks for incoming mail from a client program. The requests are handled as they appear in the mail queue. The server keeps track of all IA-objects, i.e. software modules, calibration data and model Spectral Energy Distributions of standard stars. Requests can be sent by CoCo to the server to change such an object or to create a new object. The server keeps a database of access permissions. To be able to manage this software development of IA, CoCo provides (apart from other administrative commands) a mechanism for Software Problem Reporting (SPR). Since objects are continuously changed, CoCo also provides an update mechanism to keep all client versions up-to-date. This is done by starting a full update procedure each night. All metadata, e.g. contents, version, status..., about objects inserted in CoCo is immediately stored in a relational database implemented in Sybase, located on the server machine. This database is a powerful tool to keep track of dependencies of and between IA-objects. The database is accessible via a WWW interface. Results of queries contain hyperlinks that have the WWW browser activate a CoCo client to transfer the corresponding IA-objects from the server to the client machine.

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