All users in a Rational® ClearCase® community
require access to one or more views to do their work.
Views provide several important functions:
- Access to VOB data
- Workspaces where users can modify VOB data
- Short-term storage for other data created during the development
process
A typical view contains a combination of versioned artifacts (versions
of VOB elements) and unversioned artifacts (view-private files that
do not exist in any VOB).
There are three types of views:
- Snapshot views, which contain copies of versions of specified
VOB elements, along with view-private objects. Snapshot views must
be updated manually to access new versions that have been checked
in to the VOB from other views.
- Web views, which are similar to snapshot views but are accessed
from the Rational ClearCase Remote
Client.
- Dynamic views, which provide transparent access to versions of
elements in the VOB and to view-private objects. A dynamic view can
access any version of an element selected by the view's
config spec as soon as the version is checked in.
Unlike VOBs, which are long-lived repositories, typically created
and maintained by an administrator, views tend to be short lived and
are usually created by individual developers. View administration
is simpler than VOB administration, involving little more than occasional
backups, periodic maintenance, and attention to access control issues. Views and view administration and the mkview reference
page provide more information about views and view administration.