Teams use their familiar tools, such as Rational Team Concert™, Rational DOORS®, Rational Design Management, Rational Quality Manager, and Rational Rhapsody®, to create lifecycle artifacts, such as work items, design models, quality plans, and test cases. Rational Engineering Lifecycle Manager retrieves these artifacts as linked data from the Lifecycle Query Engine whenever users need the artifacts.
Users can access artifacts using queries, organize artifacts by creating product configurations and products, visualize artifacts by using views, and analyze artifacts by performing impact analysis. Therefore, you can support artifacts moving through a product development lifecycle, and view the relationships between artifacts, even though they are created, updated, and maintained in completely different tools.
The data in this figure is valuable, but because the data resides in separate repositories and cannot be used together, it is not as useful as it could be.

The data in this figure is both valuable and useful because the information is linked. The Linked Lifecycle Data allows teams to create and understand relationships between artifacts.

Using lifecycle traceability, product managers can ensure that the development team meets the needs of the business, and that there are no gaps in testing. Product managers can triage defects with visibility into how relationships to other artifacts are impacted. Quality improves because each team member has access to the artifact that they depend on, and everyone shares the same view regardless of their role.
For a detailed discussion, see Technical overview.