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| − | =Is OSEE an application framework or an application? =
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| − | The simple answer is BOTH. OSEE Application Framework is created to allow applications to be built on top and share the common data model. This can be used independently of any OSEE applications. In addition, there are applications that are delivered with and use the OSEE Application Framework. This includes a full featured Requirements and Document Management System (OSEE Define), a powerful change tracking and configuration management application (OSEE ATS - Action Tracking System), a fully customizable peer-review module and other project, reporting and metrics tools. These application can be used out-of-the-box and new applications can be created or integrated on the framework to share and contribute to the same data.
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| − | = Other products sound similar. Why OSEE? =
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| − | * Open Source Extensible Platform
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| − | * Open Eclipse Project w/ Collaboration
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| − | * Tight Integration Around A Common Data Model
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| − | * Full Lifecycle Engineering Environment
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| − | = Is OSEE only for Avionics Engineering? =
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| − | No. OSEE's was created by The Boeing Company in support of the Apache AH-64 Attack Helicopter flight control software. Although it was created to handle the complexity of a large US Department of Defense program, it was architected to support any systems engineering project from a simple application built for a single customer to a large complex application like the Apache flight controls. In addition, since OSEE is an independent application, the OSEE development team uses OSEE to develop, deploy and maintain OSEE.
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| − | = What is Define? =
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| − | OSEE Define is OSEE's advanced Requirements and Document Management System. OSEE Define can be used to track a simple application's requirements, code and test or configured to support a large program doing concurrent development with multiple parallel builds and manage requirements for multiple product lines simultaneously. Although any application file (document) can be stored and managed, OSEE Define is tightly integrated with Microsoft Word(c) to store and manage individual requirement objects (stored in XML) and provide advanced features like index based searching and showing differences between historical changes. Integrated tightly with the Action Tracking System, OSEE Define can be configured to provide advanced configuration management for any set of requirements object.
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| − | = What is the Action Tracking System (ATS)? =
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| − | The Action Tracking System is the tightly integrated configuration management system built in OSEE and very tightly integrated with the OSEE Application Framework. It uses a powerful workflow engine to provides a fully customizeable workflow to track improvements, problems and support for any number of teams/tools/programs simultaneously. This gives the user a single point view into all the work that they are required to do.
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| − | = Why build yet another bug tracking tool like the Action Tracking System (ATS)? =
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| − | Although there are a number of open source and commercial bug tracking systems available, OSEE's goal to integrate workflow management and provide a tight integration with the Application Framework, and the applications built on top, required us to develop ATS. ATS is meant to be more than simple bug tracking since it can be used to manage multiple teams working on multiple products or support simultaneously. This means that you can create a single "Action" to "Fix the XYZ capability" that will create the necessary workflows for all the teams that need to perform work. For example, a workflow may be created for not only the Software Development team, but also the test team, documentation team, integration team and even facilities like labs or conference rooms. Each team then moves independently through its workflow to perform the work necessary for the common "Action". In addition, ATS enables complete customization of different workflows for each configured team. This means that the documentation team can follow their own "process" which may contain 5 different states while the application developers can follow their own more complex "process" which may contain 30 different states.
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| − | = How does OSEE handle traceability? =
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| − | [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requirements_Traceability Traceability] is handled in OSEE through the use of Relations. These relations can be defined in OSEE according to their need and the users can then add and remove these relations throughout the lifecycle of the requirements or other artifacts. Deliverable
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| − | documents or any report generation would also use this traceability.
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| − | = What is Skynet? =
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| − | Skynet is a legacy term for the persistence portion of the OSEE Application Framework.
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| − | = What are Artifact Framework types? =
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| − | OSEE provides Artifacts, Attributes and Relations that are strongly
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| − | typed. This means that the user can create their own artifact type, for example a "Software Requirement" to represent the requirements at a software level and their own attribute types, for example a "Qualification" attribute or a "Safety Criticality" attribute and event their own relations, for example a "Software Requirement to Allocation" relation. These types are defined in the Artifact Framework and can be created dynamically in the system during database creation or while running. This allows the end user to expand the data that is being stored in OSEE without providing a new release.
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| − | = Can I import existing traceability into OSEE? =
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| − | Quick Answer: Yes
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| − | Since traceability is usually defined in a way that is specific to it's use and the objects that are being traced, there is currently no "generic" traceability importing in OSEE, however OSEE provides BLAM that would enable traceability to be imported from existing applications, documents, excel spreadsheets. This capability has already been used a number of times to successfully import traceability from legacy documents and systems on projects OSEE has been deployed to.
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| − | = Can I import from Microsoft Excel(c)? =
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| − | Quick Answer: Yes
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| − | Through OSEE's BLAM tool, users can import from other applications, documents and spreadsheets.
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| − | = How do I publish documents from OSEE? =
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| − | The majority of the work in publishing out of OSEE has been in the format of Microsoft Word(c) documents. The user can create a Word template that "describes" the format, headers, footers and what data maps into the specified areas in the template. A BLAM is then run where the user can specify the branch and what artifacts are to be published. Upon execution, the documents are created. This method has successfully generated documents in excess of 10,000 pages that were delivered to the customer.
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| − | The OSEE architecture also supports other methods of publishing including web and open document formats. Depending on the level of complexity, some work would be done to provide further export capabilities.
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| − | Another form of publishing that OSEE was architected for is delivery of OSEE and the database. Although OSEE can publish documents and reports, it was decided early on that the vendors and customers would want and need the same navigation and exportation capabilities that OSEE provides. Instead of delivering generated documents, one of the projects that OSEE is deployed on delivers a copy of OSEE with a sanitized database (confidential data removed). This has been very successful from both the program and customer's point of view.
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| − | = What databases can be used with OSEE? =
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| − | OSEE was architected to be database independent and should run on any SQL-99 compliant DB that has a JDBC driver. It is currently runs on Oracle 10g and 11g and PostgreSQL 8.2. In the past, OSEE has also been run on Derby and MySQL. The current release of OSEE would need to be tested for compatibility with Derby, MySQL, or any other database. If desired, the OSEE Team could work with the user/developers to help perform this task.
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