Merlin ToolChain

Magical connections

Interconnecting tools between partners!

Introduction

Merlin ToolChain for Eclipse

Interconnecting tools between partners!

Development tools are no islands. Instead, they are connected and these connections need to be managed efficiently.

Merlin ToolChain integrates different tools that you and your partners are already using in your software development projects. You can keep your current way of working while you gain transparency in the development efforts of your partners. Thus, Merlin ToolChain is the best way known to collaborate with your business partners without interfering your normal way of working.

ToolChain integrates requirements, configuration management, project management, and testing tools via Eclipse using plug-ins. Merlin ToolChain enables transparency beyond partner borders by

  • improving traceability of development entities during the software development lifecycle
  • offering a real-time view to track and manage resources and tasks of the project.
  • producing a consistent view to your product artefacts status in realtime.
  • giving the feeling to developers that they sit next to each other, even though they are on the other side of the world.

Merlin ToolChain is a practical solution to your company’s problems in collaboration.

Background

Collaboration is essential in product development

  • Nowadays companies hardly develop embedded products completely on their own
  • Instead embedded systems need to be developed globally distributed, in collaboration with subcontractors, third party developers and in-house development.

Tools are indispensable to meet the productivity requirements

  • With small scale product development of the past, only few tools were used.
  • Nowadays software development is becoming increasingly complex and productivity requirements are so high that various development tools are needed.

Tools need to be connected

  • No tool or development entity is an island. Instead, they are connected and these connections need to be managed efficiently.
  • Interoperability is not readily available in development tools and data transfer between tools used in different SW development phases is considered difficult
  • No common data formats between tools from different vendors so manual data transferring and handling is needed
    • Manual data transfer is laborious and increases errors.

Tools should be integrable rather than integrated

  • Integrated, bundled, single-vendor tool-solutions are not the answer:
    • Parts of problems are well addressed by the tools already in use, so there is no need to change.
    • Introduction of a total/new solution has a major impact on the operation, creating a too-high-of-a-risk.

The solution: Tool integration optimised for your needs!