The paper describes the need for and goals of tool-integration within software development processes. In particular we focus on agile software development but are not limited to. The integration of tools and data between the different domains of the process is essential for an efficient, effective and customized software development. We describe what the next steps in the pursuit of integration are and how major goals can be achieved. Beyond theoretical and architectural considerations we describe the prototypical implementation of an open platform approach. The paper introduces platform apps and a functionality store as general concepts to make apps and their functionalities available to the community. We describe the implementation of the approach and how it can be practically utilized. The description is based on one major use case and further steps are motivated by various other examples.
Another approach to be mentioned here is pursued by Biehl @cite_0 . They build a service discovery and orchestration framework for OSLC services, representing single development tools and systems. The idea of OSLC is to provide vendor independently lifecycle data -- originally for the application lifecycle management (ALM). For orchestrating tools' functionalities, exposed via RESTful OSLC services, process chains are described by a domain specific language. Decoupling vendor specific models is a very vital feature of OSLC, but it has also its drawbacks due to the use of RESTful services. Mapping bidirectional communication with RESTful services is --although possible with workarounds-- by definition not considered in HTTP.
@cite_0
160775773
Globally distributed development of complex systems relies on the use of sophisticated development tools but today the tools provide only limited possibilities for integration into seamless tool chains. If development tools could be integrated, development data could be exchanged and tracing across remotely located tools would be possible and would increase the efficiency of globally distributed development. We use a domain specific modeling language to describe tool chains as models on a high level of abstraction. We use model-driven technology to synthesize the implementation of a service-oriented wrapper for each development tool based on OSLC (Open Services for Lifecyle Collaboration) and the orchestration of the services exposed by development tools. The wrapper exposes both tool data and functionality as web services, enabling platform independent tool integration. The orchestration allows us to discover remote tools via their service wrapper, integrate them and check the correctness of the orchestration.