Borland Will Supply Requirements Management To Visual Studio Team SystemBorland Will Supply Requirements Management To Visual Studio Team System

Borland Software Corp. will bring out a version of its CaliberRM requirements-management tool that works inside Visual Studio 2005 Team System shortly after Microsoft launches the new, collaborative toolset in the second half of 2005.

The Borland addition will make the high end of the Visual Studio 2005 line more competitive with tools that already include software requirements management, such as Telelogic AB's Doors or IBM Rational Software's RequisitePro. In a fashion similar to leading Java tool vendors, Microsoft's Team System will be able to relate a software system's requirements to other steps of the development process, "including models, source files, or test plans," says Marc Brown, director of product management at Borland.

Borland announced the Team System version of its requirements tool at Microsoft's TechEd Conference in Orlando on Monday. Existing versions of CaliberRM can be used to capture requirements at the start of a software project and then import them into existing versions of Microsoft tools, such as Visual Studio Version 6 or Visual Studio 2003 Standard Edition or Professional Edition. But the upcoming CaliberRM for Team System will be more tightly integrated with the Microsoft tools.

By purchasing a CaliberRM Team System license from Borland, a customer will be able to activate CaliberRM inside the Visual Studio user interface. A developer will be able to use the Visual Studio Team Explorer browser to get to a listing of CaliberRM requirements or use the Visual Studio's main navigation toolbar to reach a requirements view presented by CaliberRM, Brown says.

"Microsoft sees the importance of requirements management in the software development. It came to Borland to produce it. This has been a good, joint effort," Brown says. Borland is the first external tools supplier to make use of a federated linking service that, in this case, ties requirements in the external tool to system models, source-code files, and the system-testing plan inside Visual Studio. The linking service allows a tool alongside Visual Studio to appear to be working inside it and keeps the requirements in view for each step of the development process.

It's the second such Borland/Microsoft collaboration to fill a hole in the Microsoft line-up in two months. In April, Borland said its Together 2005 for Visual Studio .Net Designer and Together 2005 for Visual Studio .Net Developer would support UML 2.0 modeling for the Microsoft .Net line of languages.

In the case of CaliberRM in particular, it reflects an effort by Microsoft to bring its .Net tools into line with the same capabilities offered by Java tools working in the Eclipse open-source programmer's workbench. The workbench gives a common user interface to the many tools that plug into it, along with an ability to swap files. CaliberRM already provides requirements management for Borland's main Java tool, JBuilder, which can work in Eclipse, Brown says.

CaliberRM for Team System will be priced the same as existing Caliber versions, $2,000 per developer. It will ship in early 2006, Brown says, "shortly after Microsoft ships Visual Studio 2005 Team System."