MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY}w¡¢£¤¥¦§¨ OF I !"#$%&'()+,-./012345<yA|NFORMATICS Modern open source Java EE-based process and issue tracker DIPLOMA THESIS Monika Gottvaldová Brno, 2014 Declaration Hereby I declare, that this paper is my original authorial work, which I have worked out by my own. All sources, references and literature used or excerpted during elaboration of this work are properly cited and listed in complete reference to the due source. Monika Gottvaldová Advisor: doc. RNDr. Tomáš Pitner, Ph.D. ii Acknowledgement I would like to thank Ing. OndˇrejŽižka for his advice and help during the creation of this thesis. iii Abstract This thesis deals with the topic concerning issue tracking systems, their functionality and features. It compares several issue tracking systems, their advantages and disadvantages. It describes a development of such a sys- tem and the use of modern Java EE technologies – JPA, Wicket, and CDI. The main motivation for creating a new issue tracking system and the sub- sequent development is also described. The thesis analyses its basic design and implementation. iv Keywords Issue tracking system, Wicket, modern Java EE, issue, bug, workflow, cus- tomization v Contents 1 Introduction ...............................1 2 Issue Tracking Systems ........................3 2.1 Bugzilla . .4 2.2 Trac . .6 2.3 JIRA . .7 2.4 Mantis . .8 2.5 BugTracker.NET . .9 2.6 Redmine . 10 2.7 FogBugz . 11 3 Analysis of Relevant Processes in Red Hat ............. 14 3.1 RHEL 6 QE . 14 3.1.1 Process Phases Description . 14 3.1.2 Bugzilla Process . 15 3.2 Fedora QE . 16 3.2.1 Process Phases Description . 18 3.2.2 Bugzilla Process . 18 3.3 Middleware QE (EAP, JBoss Fuse, ..) . 19 3.3.1 Process Phases Description . 19 3.3.2 Bugzilla Process . 20 3.4 RHEL 7 QE . 21 3.4.1 Process Phases Description . 21 3.4.2 Bugzilla Process . 21 3.5 Process Diagram Applied to Workflow . 22 3.6 Bugzilla Processes Evaluation . 22 4 Motivation for New Tracking System ................ 25 4.1 Modern Java EE 6 Open Source . 25 4.2 Customizable Workflow . 25 4.3 Custom Fields . 26 4.4 Socialization . 27 4.5 Security . 27 4.6 User Friendly Interface . 28 4.7 Search . 28 4.8 Process Tracking . 28 5 Analysis, Design and Implementation ............... 30 5.1 Specification Of An Issue Tracking System Prototype . 30 5.2 Use-Case Diagram . 31 5.3 Data Model . 31 vi 5.3.1 Data Model of Issue Tracking System Security . 31 5.3.2 Data Model of Project, its Elements and Wokflow . 31 5.3.3 Data Model of Issue Entity and its Components . 33 5.4 Implementation with Wicket . 34 5.4.1 Wicket Advantages . 36 5.5 Application Composition . 37 5.6 Used Technologies . 37 5.6.1 JPA . 37 5.6.2 Entity management - JPQL/Criteria API . 38 5.6.3 Context and Dependency Injection . 39 5.6.4 WICKET . 39 5.6.5 Test Driven Development with Wicket . 41 5.6.6 Junit . 41 5.6.7 WicketTester . 41 5.7 Using the System for Tasks . 42 5.7.1 Hiring Process . 42 5.7.2 Part of the Hiring Process is Internship . 43 5.7.3 Tracking Systems Used for Hiring . 44 6 Conclusion ................................ 45 A Content of enclosed CD ........................ 53 vii 1 Introduction In all companies, employees work on some tasks, cooperate within the team and go through certain processes, making it advantageous to track their work. Many systems enabling such a tracking can be used by these com- panies, and are called ’issue tracking systems’. Users are able to track their tasks, share them with other team members, add intended details, attach- ments, set defining attributes, set the state of the issue regarding the per- formed action etc. Many companies want to use the system not only for task tracking, but also for bug reporting during the test phase of a product, for project management and arbitrary company corporate processes, and want the systems to be very customizable. Comparison of few issue tracking systems helps to define the features, which the system should include. The defining quality is customization - features should be customizable, and it is therefore an advantage for the system to be created as open source using Java EE technologies for the de- velopers to customize the code. Systems should be also easy to use and have intuitive and user friendly graphical user interface (GUI). They should be applicable to numerous processes and usable by many companies to map these processes. This thesis describes a number of processes in Red Hat and their map- ping in Bugzilla, which in turn describes a detailed issue lifecycle and its connection to real work. There are differences in all the processes, so it is paramount for the system users to be able to adapt the system to their needs. Also, Red Hat has its own hiring process, for which this system can be used as well. Another objective is to design a system that satisfies many problems. Wicket, CDI and JPA are used for the implementation, Wicket and CDI for the functionality and JPA for the data model. The usage of Wicket is very easy and intuitive, this framework enables the creation of functional classes and their HTML pages, both in object-oriented way. It is extendable and reusable because of usage of components that can be easily added into the code. The JPA ensures the mapping of the objects to the database tables. The system interface is designed to be user friendly and intuitive and the possible user actions have to be restricted by roles and permissions, which allows the users to be sure what they can do. There are many plans for future development to include more advan- tages in the system, such as the possibility to add plugins, which would support the adaptability, full text search for more effective searching, cus- 1 1. INTRODUCTION tom stream dashbord to enhance the team cooperation, time management feature to track the time spent on the task and integration with many other exsisting tools. 2 2 Issue Tracking Systems An issue tracking system is an important software used by many compa- nies. Is it used mostly for its benefits of easy management and issue prior- itization, which enables effective work planning and valuable input when defining the product road map, simple team cooperation and communica- tion and great project organization and clear overview to generate a report from. There are several ways to use this tool. The main usage is to track, man- age and maintain lists of issues reported and being watched by employees or customers. Employees working on a project can track their own tasks, or tasks of a team, they can share them, comment on them, provide ap- propriate attributes and details and review the progress of the task and its state at their leisure. Yet another possibility is the usage by the Quality En- gineering (QE) team. The responsibility of the QE team is to test a project release and report bugs for the tested project into the system. These bugs are then tracked by management and developers and subsequently solved. This system can be also called ’bug tracking system’. The usage of issue tracking systems for customer support call centers, help desks or support teams is also widespread. Customers, end users or employees in the sup- port teams create tickets for the issues containing the description, steps to reproduce the issue and most important information and the tickets are then solved by the support team. The support team can quickly locate the end user through the ticket and has all the information in one place, simpli- fying the work. [36] The tracking systems don’t have to be mapped to issues and tasks ex- clusively, but also to various company processes involving job applications, tracking individuals and their progress of seeking employment, and also management processes and everything that goes through a sequence of events or activities in general. Issues All the units that are being tracked in the system, e.g. bugs, tasks, processes etc. are called ’issues’. The issue itself has several attributes, which need to be maintained. It is important to create a short and apposite summary of the problem and explain every known detail in the description along with an eventual workaround. There are many fields in the issue. One field reflects the severity and overall importance of the issue. The severity level can be e.g. minor, medium, or major. Also included are the priority, type 3 2. ISSUE TRACKING SYSTEMS of the issue, date of creation, product and its version, and others relevant to the type of the issue. Each issue maintains the history of every change. The issues are also passing through workflow during their lifecycles, the workflow being posibly unique for every project. Workflow Workflow is an important part of every tracking system and every issue has to go through it. Workflow consists of several connected steps, the order of which depends on the circumstances of the issue and the workflow’s settings. Basically, it is a set of statuses and transitions the issue goes through during its lifecycle. Workflows typically represent business processes. Sta- tus represents a state of the issue at a specific point within the workflow. An issue can only be in one state at a time. The transitions represents a passage from one status to another and the name of the transition should reflect the action of passing the issue from one state to another. Only when a transi- tion in workflow between two statuses has been created can the issue be shifted from the first to the second state.