It's time to join the League of Extraordinary Software Developers at the IBM Rational Software Development Conference 2008, June 1 - 5, at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Hotel. Yes, Rational User, look to the skies! The R-Signal is sweeping across the clouds with the challenge: R-U Ready To Save The Day?

For a discounted registration fee, please use the code found on the Member Benefits Page

Please help us find out more on how you use Rational products by participating in our monthly surveys.

RUG Call for Content!
Share your own tips and tricks, great ideas, or articles with the global community! We are dedicating this section of our newsletter to include content authored by YOU! Please contact us at info@rational-ug.org to share your content.

GRUG Council Member Highlight
Dr. Glenn A. Stout is currently the Quality and Methods Manager at Hewitt Associates, in the Internal Business Systems group, where he manages a quality assurance team, as well as a RUP-inspired software development methodology. As a consultant for 10 years previous to his current position, he helped clients roll out appropriate methodologies and tools to support a solid software development approach, almost always supported by IBM Rational tools. A frequent attendee at the Rational User Conferences, he has presented at the conference 9 times, generally in the Quality and Requirements tracks. Glenn earned a Ph.D. in Information Systems from Nova Southeastern University in 2006. During his doctoral studies, he wrote papers that were published both online and in print on Requirements Traceability, Testing Best Practices, Public Key Infrastructure, and his development of an Information Security Decision-Making methodology (created using a modified RUP). He is a prior military officer, and has a first degree black belt in Taekwondo. Residing in the Chicago suburb of Palatine, IL, with his wife Cheryl and son Jaxon, he currently runs the 400-member strong Chicago Rational User Group (CRUG) and is the current sitting President of the Global Rational User Group Council. Contact him at ChicagoRUG@Gmail.com, or at StoutPhd.com

GRUG Council Update
As it has been reported in previous issues of this newsletter, the Global Rational User Group Council is an organization of local user group leaders and others with a focus on ensuring that all 86 user groups and all 13,200 members of the greater Rational User Group are represented where it counts the most - at the Rational product level. There are client advocacy groups that are aligned to each Rational product, and in these meetings, various features and functions are decided upon and discussed. These seats are generally and rightfully filled with representatives of Rational's biggest customers, or companies with large installs of the various products. The GRUG is determined to get a seat at the table of each of these groups for YOU, the USER -as our organization is greater than 13,000 strong. By owning the various survey tools and communication vehicles to you, the user (The user group owns the user lists, not IBM), we have a lot to bring to the table in the form of thoughts and opinions of the user community. So, if you see surveys and questions on the site - answer them, your answers may one day influence one of your favorite Rational Tools.

Rational User Group Community Statistics:

RUG Community Membership: 13,500
RUG Active User Group: 87
RUG Newsletter Subscribers: 8,800

UG News

RUGA (Rational User Group Austria)
RUGA (Rational User Group Austria) is a new user group led by Christian Masopust. In December alone, they added 13 new members. The group has met on January 14th for its inaugural meeting.

Ready for IBM Rational software Comes to You Webinar Series
The Ready for IBM Rational software comes to you webinar series returns for 2008:

January 23rd at 12pm: Integrated Project Lifecycle Modeling: IBM Rational and SEER by Galorath- Sponsored by Galorath

February 13th at 12pm: Secure at the Source: Implementing Source Code Analysis in the IBM Rational Software Delivery Lifecycle - Sponsored by Ounce Labs

More Information About the Series

PLEASE NOTE: We have added audio streaming as an option for our international members.

New IBM Technologies Help Developers Build Safer Software
IBM today announced new software that takes the complexity out of complex systems development and improves developer productivity.

Oxford International Modernizes Vehicle
"Because Rational Application Developer is based on Eclipse, the learning curve for new development resources is greatly reduced. When we needed to scale by bringing in new devel­opers, it was easy to find the required skill sets because many are already familiar with the Eclipse environ­ment. This allowed us to use beginning- to intermediate-level Java developers and get them up and run­ning very quickly," - -Alan Jack, director of technology, Oxford International

Service Oriented Architecture for Product Lifecycle Management
Flexible architecture helps shipbuilder navigate a complex change environment Case Study DeepView

Casas Bahia makes better use of marketing dollars and cuts costs by leveraging IBM System z and IBM software technology.
"With the new solutions from IBM, we are better positioned to launch effective marketing initiatives and to manage the consumer and sales growth they generate." - -Frederico Wanderley, CIO, Casas Bahia

Enterprise Generation Language
IBM's Enterprise Generation Language (EGL) offers an alternative to full blown Java development for enterprise modernization. Here are a few examples of cusotmers that have embraced EGL and met key corporate business objectives.

Morpheus Automates Gap Insurance Processing Using EGL
"For many of our customers, there is no need to become Java programmers - it is too much of a leap for them. With EGL, they can produce applications, and lack of Java expertise is not going to stop them from getting things done." - Bleddyn Williams, Director, Morpheus Limited

Community Health and Counseling Services accelerates delivery of HIPAA-compliant medical software with EGL
"We have very experienced programmer analysts that know RPG very well. With EGL, we are not going to lose that strength; we are going to complement it with the ability to deploy browser-based user interfaces. EGL plugs into the IBM WebSphere® Development Studio Client environment we were already using, and it offered us a way to rapidly develop true end-to-end Web-based applications without learning Java." -- - Valerie Levy, MIS Manager

EGL Helps NCB Leverage Existing Expertise and Systems to Enable Customer Self-Service
"Clearly not everyone was a highly skilled Web developer. But with EGL we are shielded by the technology - we did not have to worry about all the protocols and communication details. That is why the team could be productive very fast." -- - Torger Thevik

SANS Security 2008
January 12-18, 2008
New Orleans, LA

WICSA 2008 - Canada
February 18-22, 2008
Vancouver, Canada

IBM Rational Software Development Conference 2008
June 1-5, 2008
Orlando, FL

Innovate don't duplicate! Asset reuse strategies for success
1/10/2008

Integrated Project Lifecycle Modeling: IBM Rational and SEER by Galorath
1/23/2008

Secure at the Source: Implementing Source Code Analysis in the IBM Rational Software Delivery Lifecycle
2/13/2008

Driving Business Success with Rational Process Library

Best Practices: The Integrated Project and Portfolio Management Platform

Trial Downloads

Download IBM Rational Developer for System z
Download a free trial version of IBM Rational Developer for System z, software that can help you deliver core development capabilities; the power of Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE); and rapid application development support to diverse enterprise application development teams.

Try the IBM SOA Sandbox for People
Visit IBM developerWorks to try the IBM SOA Sandbox for people. The SOA Sandbox for people provides a trial environment with the necessary tooling and components required to enable consistent human and process interaction and collaboration, showing how you can improve user experience and business productivity.

Demos

IBM® Rational® Application Developer for WebSphere® v7.5 Open Beta
RAD v7.5 open beta provides tooling to support the JEE5 standard including EJB3.0, JPA, JSF 1.2, and other standards. Improve developer productivity for already existing applications with improved support for refactoring, adding new features to existing applications, and tooling for Enterprise Information Systems (EIS).

Static analysis using Rational Application Developer Version 7
This demonstration shows the new capabilities of Rational® Application Developer Version 7 and Rational Software Architect Version 7 to perform static analysis of code.

Access a Web service using Flex 2 in Rational Software Architect V7
See how easy it is to access Web services using Adobe Flex 2. Flex uses a combination of ActionScript and XML to create powerful, user-friendly applications.

White Paper

Lean Development Governance
Effective governance for lean development isn't about command and control. Instead, the focus is on enabling the right behaviors and practices through collaborative and supportive techniques.

Are You Being Served?
Read "Are You Being Served?" to discover which built-in hooks should be provided by application developers to enable more efficient and automated software testing.

eKit

Rational Build Forge Express eKit
The new Rational Build Forge Express eKit provides you with valuable resources - including a case study, podcast, demo, and articles - to help you increase staff productivity, compress development cycles and deliver better software, fast.

Tutorials

Improve your build process with IBM Rational Build Forge, Part 1: Create a continuous build and integration environment
Learn how to implement a build management system that uses and extends your existing automation technologies. This tutorial shows, step-by-step, how to install and configure IBM Rational Build Forge to manage builds for Jakarta Tomcat from source code.

Improve your build process with IBM Rational Build Forge, Part 2: Automate builds for a real-world Tomcat project
Learn how Rational Build Forge can extend a simple compile and package build process by adding customization and deployment capability.

Test terminal-based applications with Rational Functional Tester
In this tutorial, you'll learn how the Rational Functional Tester Extension for Terminal-Based Applications works with other Rational Functional Tester to help test terminal-based applications quickly and easily.

Score More Savings from IBM
For a limited time, purchase $25,000 worth of training in an IBM Education Pack - online account, and in addition to your automatic 10 percent savings you'll also receive $2,000 in bonus training dollars. That's $27,000 worth of IBM training for just $22,500 - $4,500 in extra training dollars! Purchase $50,000 in your online account, and in addition to your automatic savings of $5,000, you'll receive $5,000 more in bonus training dollars. That's $10,000 in extra training dollars! You may use the IBM Education Pack - online account, to pay for your Rational software, and other, training needs.

Now Available - Fall 2007 IBM Training eCatalog
Keeping technical skills up-to-date with constantly changing technology can be a challenge. But not anymore. Announcing the 2007 Fall IBM Training eCatalog. The catalog features 183 new courses, 25 updated courses and 25 technical conferences encompassing 29 curriculum areas covering hardware and software topics, including Rational software.

You can also request a print copy of the catalog.

IBM Rational Instructor-Led Online (ILO) courses
Get the education you need on Rational tools right from your desk and be part of a virtual classroom! Rational Education now offers Instructor-Led Online courses, which are synchronous classes with live instructor interactions, hands-on labs, and group interactions. ILO provides you with an alternative to traveling to a physical classroom location by training you in your own learning environment. ILO training also benefits those who need to train teams that are geographically dispersed allowing you to complete training locally in your own environment, and reduces the need for travel to a classroom.

ProObject Training is an IBM Premier Partner certified to conduct the full line of Rational training. ProObject Training offers a variety of courses including Ration Rose Real Time using C++, and the full line of ClearQwest products.

Our training facility, equipped with state-of-the-art computer workstations, is located in Hanover, MD just a few miles from the Baltimore Washington International (BWI) airport.