Creating artifacts from Rational Focal Point to another application

If an application supports RESTful APIs, you can create artifacts in that application from the business needs in IBM® Rational® Focal Point™. For example, you can create requirements in the Requirements Management application of the Rational solution for Collaborative Lifecycle Management from the business needs in Rational Focal Point.

Before you begin

Procedure

  1. In Rational Focal Point, open the workspace.
  2. Click Configure > REST client view command, and click Add view command.
  3. Select a view where you want to add the view command.
  4. In REST Client Command Configuration section, complete these steps:
    1. In REST Client Connector Name, type a name to identify the connection.
    2. In REST Request Method, select the POST method. For information about using each method, see the "Supported methods to manage resources" topic.
    3. In Friends List, select the application that you added as a friend to Rational Focal Point.
    4. In Choose Unique Attribute to POST, click Select and select an attribute. This attribute is empty. After the first POST operation, it stores the response URL from the application. So, for subsequent POST operations, if the URL is same, the POST operation does not happen for that URL.
    5. In REST Application Request URL, type the top-level URL of the area in the application where you are creating artifacts. For example, for the Requirements Management application, use the requirement creation factory URL. To get this URL, typically you use the root services URL to get the RMCatalog URL. You use the RMCatalog URL to get the project area URL; then you use the project area URL to get the requirement factory URL.
  5. In the REST Client Template XML Configuration section, complete these steps:
    1. In REST Application URL to Template XML, type the URL that points to an artifact in the application, and click Get Template XML. The XML loads in the REST Application Template XML text box. If you do not want XML to load dynamically, you can copy the XML in the REST Application Template XML text box.
      Note: For the POST operation, you must know the XML structure of the application where you are posting artifacts. So you get the XML either dynamically or manually. After getting the code, that XML must support posting of new data to the application. In some applications, if the XML does not support that, you have to manually create or edit the XML.
    2. In Root XPath to REST Application Artifact, click Select, and select the root XPath for attributes. The Select button is enabled only if the XML in REST Application Template XML is correct.
  6. In the Attribute Mapping section, click Add, and map the Rational Focal Point attributes with the attributes of the application. For example, if you map the Title attribute of Rational Focal Point with the Name attribute of the application, after the POST operation, the Name attribute in the application is changed to Title.
  7. In the Response section, complete these steps:
    1. In REST Application Template XML, specify the XML that is received in response to the GET method or specify any other XML of the application. In the Root XPath to REST Application Artifact specify the root XPath to attributes, and then in Response Attribute Mapping click Add to map the attributes.
    2. In the Response Header Mapping section, click Add to map the application header with a Rational Focal Point attribute. The application header stores the XML of that application. Typically, the Rational solution for CLM applications header is Location.
  8. In the Configuration section, complete these steps:
    1. In REST Application supported Date Format, type the date format that the external application uses.
    2. In Focal Point Separator, type a separator value such as a comma (,) or a semicolon (;). The MultiChoice and the LinkedList items will be separated by the specified separator.
  9. To map the IDs of the attributes between Rational Focal Point and the application, in the Request Parameter Table section, click Add, and select a Rational Focal Point attribute. Type the ID of the application in the Key column. For example, if you select Project ID for Rational Focal Point, in the Key column, type the ID that is used for the project ID in the application.
  10. In the Request Header Mapping section, click Add, and type the name and value of the header. For the Rational solution for CLM applications, the headers are as follows:
    Header name Header value
    Accept application/rdf+xml
    Content-Type application/rdf+xml
    OSLC-Core-Version 2.0
  11. Click Save.
  12. In the Display menu, select the view the elements of which you want to create in the other application.
  13. To create all the artifacts that are available in the view, from the view toolbar click the dropdown list and select the POST view command and then click the Go icon Go.
  14. To create one artifact, from the artifact toolbar select the POST view command and then click the Go icon Go.

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