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ALF to Bid Bye-Bye to Point-to-Point Integrations


Compuware latest to lend support to Eclipse project

By Jennifer deJong
November 1, 2005 — 
What does ALF stand for?

Technically speaking, “Alien Life Form,” the 1980s television sitcom puppet, is correct. But the more apt answer for software development managers is “Application Lifecycle Framework.”

The Eclipse project addressing that issue got some attention last month as Detroit-based toolmaker Compuware pledged its support for the Serena-led effort that got under way in July.

ALF aims to eliminate a problem that has long plagued toolmakers and their customers: writing point-to-point integrations that allow offerings from different toolmakers to exchange data. In a perfect world, customers would buy requirements management, issue tracking, change management, bug tracking, build management and other tools from a single provider, which would ensure everything worked together, said Kevin Parker, vice president of market development for San Mateo, Calif.-based Serena. “But we can’t get customers to buy everything we do.”

Dealing with integration demands hurts all players involved. “Customers don’t want to spend four hours on the phone with tech support, changing the registry settings,” he said. And toolmakers much prefer to allocate resources to product improvements than to integration efforts. The problem is compounded each time a toolmaker updates its product, breaking the earlier integration, added Parker. “Customers say: ‘I’ll stick with the older version until you do the integration.’ And that, in turn, forces software vendors to maintain earlier versions.”

ALF Alpha
ALF, essentially a tool integration framework, will rely on Web services to manage interactions between applications, Parker said. The project, which plans to deliver a working alpha version in January 2006, followed by version 1.0 in September, is based on ALF events, essentially a vocabulary that describes concepts that are common to the application life cycle, such as requirement added, new bug tracked or relationship created. ALF members, including Catalyst Systems, Cognizant Technology, Secure Software and Segue Software, are expected to contribute a common set of WSDL specifications that define such events, Parker said.

Compuware did not provide details of its planned donation. The company also announced last month that it has joined the Eclipse Foundation as a strategic developer, earning a seat on the board of directors. In addition to contributing to ALF, it expects to announce in the near future plans to lead its own Eclipse project, also in the “application life-cycle space,” said Mike Burba, Compuware’s director of marketing for application development. “We need an infrastructure that will allow our tools to work together,” added Parker. “Otherwise [we are] living in a world where a wrench fits only one socket.”


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