Borland has updated its software change and configuration management toolset with a view to greater use within globally distributed programming environments. Borland StarTeam 2008 holds a single repository of data to give teams in different locations quick access to artefacts and track revisions throughout an application's life cycle.
According to Borland, the product's single code repository works in tandem with remote caching of information, as opposed to replicating data, which has the potential for conflict changes and increased systems overhead.
Surveys have suggested that maintaining quality within globally distributed development environments is a key challenge for software-development projects. Borland's latest release aims to address this issue by promoting team communication and collaboration through centralised control of project activities and digital assets.
"When projects exceed a couple of dozen participants, enterprises need software change and configuration management [SCCM] products to support the complexity and preserve the traceability, accountability and separation of the duties required," said Gartner's Jim Duggan and Daniel B Stang in January of this year. "SCCM tools are continuing to evolve on a path to integrate tightly with or become generalised management platforms for requirements, test plans and other aspects of the application life cycle."
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Borland said the two most popular approaches for supporting geographically distributed development have their individual trade-offs. The company claimed that, although centralisation saves money, it can adversely affect performance; conversely, replication offers reasonable performance due to the higher proximity of network assets but can drain budgets from hardware, software and staff duplication.
With major vendors such as IBM targeting the need to improve tools for globally distributed development, Borland said its new release aims to address the centralisation-versus-replication trade-off and help to manage both file assets and the activity that drives change to file assets.
