Transfer Routes
Before a transfer can take place, a transfer route must first have been defined. A typical VC/m environment is set up to produce a series of pathways between locations. Together, these routes form a workflow cycle which determines the stages through which modifications must go before they can be integrated into an application. For example, a development cycle will often require a developer to pass their work to a quality assurance engineer before it can be integrated into the code base for the next release of the application.
Transfer routes define the locations that object versions can be moved or copied between. They also specify exactly what happens to the object at both the from location and the to location.
Copy or Move
The transfer route defines whether the object version is copied or moved. If the transfer is a move, the object version is removed from the from location after it has been transferred. The components are also physically deleted from that location. However, if the from location still contains the master copy of the version, this is not deleted.
If the transfer is a copy, the object version is retained in the from location as well as the to location, so it exists in both.
Transferring to Single- and Multi- version Locations
When an object version is transferred to a single-version location, it will displace any other version. This means that the previous version is removed and replaced by the new version.
When an object version is transferred to a multi-version location, any ancestor versions which exist there will not be displaced.
Dependencies
A transfer route may list a series of conditions that must be met before the transfer can take place. Dependencies are one kind of condition, and may include a list of locations at which the object version should or should not exist, as well as a series of functions that must return true before the transfer can go ahead.
For example, a transfer route that brings object versions from a development location back into a live production location may include a dependency which checks that the object version has first been transferred to a test location.
Other Factors
While these are important factors that define how a transfer route works, there are others that have to be considered when transfer routes are set up. The article on Managing Transfer Routes outlines what a VC/m system manager must consider when they define the various pathways within their environment.
See Also: Managing Transfer Routes, Single- and Multi-Version Locations, Transfers