• Manually: make it someone's job to compile the reports
• Software APIs: using published APIs from all your source control vendors write your own application to compile the data
• SOA: use a Web service to provide access to change history data

A manual process has several significant drawbacks. It is slow and it is prone to error, meaning higher costs for development and testing.

Using APIs to interface with each version control system is a better solution than a manual process in that it is faster, but requires extensive knowledge of each of the source control systems and needs constant maintenance.

An SOA solution via Web services is the best option for creating a unified change history across your entire enterprise. An SOA/Web Services solution is similar to the API option, but has several advantages:

Flexibility
A Web services solution is flexible because it does not require changes to the consumer of the Web Services when upgrading or migrating to a new source control system.

Ease of implementation
A Web Services solution from the consumer side does not require expertise in each source control system in your organization. This can be handled by the maintainers of the service itself and can be assigned to the people more intimately familiar with these systems. The web service becomes a wrapper over the API.

Leveraging of existing skill sets
As an open standard and a common framework, it is likely that the skills to implement this type of solution already exist within your organization, but they no longer have to exist within one single department or person as they would have with the strict API method.

An SOA/Web services approach might take the shape of a dashboard integrating each source control system into a single unified change history report, like that shown in Figure A. The dashboard, a gathering point for all source control data across your entire enterprise, gives you instant access to individual reports or a unified history report.

FIGURE A


Web services can provide an easy way to access different source control systems from a single interface. Roll over picture for a larger image.

Each source control system API is wrapped in a Web service. The dashboard makes calls to each Web service using a common set of calls asking for the data from each system: what changed, when it changed, who made the change and a comment regarding the change.

The dashboard then takes the data from each system and compiles it into a comprehensive audit of all changes. Anyone with access to the dashboard, from the VP of Development to the CIO has instant access to the progress of the organization's development team.

Conclusion
As organizations begin to tie together applications developed on multiple platforms, for example in the form of composite applications, the demands of IT governance and the need to comply with regulatory frameworks require detailed audit trails for all changes.

There is an obvious need for a unified change history across all source control systems in order to realize the true benefits and ROI of these new applications. Using an SOA for implementing such a unified change history to link Lotus Notes source control systems with other systems is a very real option that makes use of existing skills.

Plus, this solution doesn't burden any one department with having to know the inner workings of the myriad of source control systems that may be in use to provide change histories for the composite applications.

Craig Schumann is an integral part of Teamstudio's product engineering and development. His work is illustrated in such Teamstudio solutions as Analyzer, Build Manager, Configurator, CIAO! and Delta. He is also the developer of the famous free utility known as Teamstudio Script Browser. Prior to joining Teamstudio, Craig earned his Bachelors Degree in Computer Science from Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, where he also interned at Lotus/Iris on one of the Notes QA teams.