How to use Subversion BI4.1 SP2

[Former Member]

Hi

I have configured BI4.1 SP2 with subversion that comes with BI Installer. I have everything working on the Version Management Application on the CMC. I Can check in AddToVm objects via CMC but I am not sure how will the report developers and universe designers use this tool? I cannot give access to these user groups to CMC? Is there a documentation available as to how to use Verdsion Management. The scenario is that we would like to have our developers use Version Control(in built subversion) to check in the universe or the report that they are working on so that their work is not overwritten by other developers working on the same universe at the same time?

Is this scenario feasible? and how to achive this outcome?

Thanks!

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately Version Management in BI is not meant to be used in the same way as when you're developing code.

That's to say, you can't really have multiple people working on a universe or report at the same time and checking in, branch, etc. Also, there's no direct integration with the BI development tools (Universe designer, IDT, Webi, etc) so that also makes things harder to manage. Not to mention you only have 1 user as part of the VMS system. (The user that checks into Subversion is usually called LCM and is the only one with access to Subversion.)

You CAN however, give your developers access to the CMC and even limit them to the Version Management and Promotion Management tools.

This allows them to lock the objects so nobody else can modify them and allows the person working on the objects (report, universe, etc) to continue working on it until they're happy to release it and promote it to your QA system.

Remember you're suppose to have at least a "Dev", "QA" and "Prod" system - all development and fixes are done in Dev, QA is only for making sure that the reports, etc that were promoted to QA are correct before promoting the same promotion job from Dev to Prod. In that work flow, you would use VMS to version the promotion job and therefore the same content would be moved from Dev to Prod even if the underlying objects (reports, universes, etc) are being worked on in Dev.

-P

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

We use ebiexperts version manager for that purpose and we can give access to developpers and user for their webi reports

Regards

[Former Member]

Hi Samir,

My understanding of Version Management is that it is available only within CMC. It is more of an Administrator tool and can be used to backup objects as part of release management process. For example we use Version Management in production to backup all the impacted objects before releasing any changes in.

For Information Design Tool, we use shared projects and use lock mechanism to do multi-user development, but it doedn't offer version control.

Kind Regards

Mohan