IBM Rational Tools Aid Smart Device MakersIBM Rational Tools Aid Smart Device Makers

IBM has extended its Rational tools in three areas to position them as the platform of choice for developing features and applications on "smart" modern devices with complex requirements.

Rational System Architect, a tool enterprise software architects use to model systems, has been integrated with Rational Focal Point for Project Management. The combination allows advanced analysis and decision support capabilities to help organizations execute the right development projects at the right time, said Danny Sabbah, general manager of IBM Rational Software, in an announcement released Wednesday.

Smart devices have complex systems and software requirements. Rational requirements management software defines and manages product requirements for development project that involve building and connecting multiple systems, Sabbah said.

Enhancements to IBM Rational Doors Web Access, a requirements tracking system that allows input from non-developer stakeholders in a project, now allows users to create new requirements and input them as a project is underway. It also has a traceability feature that links code to a requirement to demonstrate compliance with design criteria.

Doors (Dynamic Object Oriented Requirement System) is a requirements product of the former Telelogic, which was acquired by IBM in April 2008. (System Architect and Focal Point are also former Telelogic products.)

Enhancements to IBM Rational Rhapsody, a modeling-based design tool, has been given added features to increase collaboration between development and quality assurance teams. The tool has been enhanced to improve the specification, capture, and documentation of systems engineering designs. Its native language capabilities have been extended to include Japanese.

IBM's Rational Software Architect for WebSphere Software has been enhanced to help developers will little services-oriented architecture experience to produce SOA-based software services. The software can be used to connect and support distributed smart devices. The Architect tool can be used to design in next generation features into mobile devices, such as click-to-call or integrated voice, video and Web page display.

It's difficult to test software designed for intelligent devices, due to each device's special hardware features. IBM's Enterprise Verification Management Solution can be used to create a comprehensive test suite for manufacturers with a system-on-a-chip at the core of the device. Architect's simulation of each manufacturer's system helps produce the tests for complex devices and reduce development costs.