Without a clear definition of the changes that have been applied to the models, it is almost impossible to perform an incremental update to the target system, resulting in the need to regenerate and re-implement the entire application. The clear specification and management of changes to the application is therefore an essential prerequisite to the efficient and rapid implementation of the changes and also to automating the implementation processes.
There are many different approaches that can be adopted to defining changes, from paper based systems to automated databases. However these often fail to address the key issue with change control, which is that the change requests need to be linked to the deliverables that were created or modified during the implementation of the change.
GuardIEn contains a change control module that enables the central definition of change requests. It is integrated with the other GuardIEn modules, and includes the ability to automatically associate the change requests to affected deliverable versions.
Change Requests can be grouped into a GuardIEn Release Pack. This provides the scope and authorisation for the automated implementation into a target environment using the GuardIEn system updating module, and ensures that related changes are implemented together.