Plugin Maven-Maximo Overview

Modifying a Maximo installation is quite simple using the supplied built-in tools but deploying the whole thing into a manageable package is not as straigth forward as it seems. This plugin is to be used when creating patches, personnalizations or custom modules for the IBM Maximo software. The plugin offers goals to create, package and even deploy Maximo solutions.

The plugin was developped mainly because no other tools of the sort were available either on the commercial market nor on the public domain. The creationg of the plugin was drivent to attain many goals:

  1. Standardize projects involving Maximo customizations or fixes
  2. Assist the programming team in the packaging of those changes
  3. Use the power of Maven to produce those packages and customize them when needed.
  4. Assist in the deployment of code during development
  5. Leveraging the Maven document generation capability to produce release notes and installation instructions

Standardize projects

The need for standardization for release production and management is a goal for every IT firm or department of a firm. In order to be able to apply ITIL principles, the deliveries of IT products must be handled in an orderly fashion and managed by a sensible process. This plugin offers this now to Maximo projects.

Typical Maximo implementation involves professionnals that are more into consulting than into software development. IT department of large companies implementing Maximo are also not so well equiped in this area. And commercial products that allows custom packaging like required in Maximo projects, or many specialized softwares built on a framework, are also inexistant.

The Maximo Maven plugin solves these issues by offering a flexible yet pre-defined way to package your Maximo development and allow your team to easily distribute the fruits of their labor!

Assist in packaging the solution

With predefined goals using configurable attributes, the plugin helps creating packages with only minimal information in the Maven standard control files. The proper usage of all the built-in capability minimizes the need for custom deployment code in your Maven projects.

Using the power of Maven with Maximo projects

Maven is a highly configurable build environment on which a great number plugins can be used. Way beyond the scope of simply producing release packages, using Maven allows a development team to produce also documentation, project reports, a complete project site documentation, use Continuous Integration and automated documentation publication engines and etc. The addition of Maximo specific projects in this environment enables at the same time the usage on these projects of all the other features offered by the Maven based tooling available today.

Assist developper's deployment

Deployment while developping is rather frequent when dealing with server based applications. This high frequency is translated into a huge productivity increase when the deployment process is automated. The Maven Maximo plugin, when properly configured using built-in proprerties, allows deploying your code and other Maximo artifacts using a single command. The same deployment configurations used for deployment in development will later also be used for the release package, making the plugin's usage even more beneficial.

Leveraging Maven documentation capability

Any software release, from the smallest hotfix to the full-fleged solution must come with some installation instructions, release notes and more. Maven, with its documentation capability, can be used to generate not only HTML documentation but also PDF. The Maven Maximo plugin uses the PDF plugin to integrate installation instructions generation in PDF format. This feature is highly usefull especially if your solution has to be installed by a third party, or the customers themselves.