FAQ

General Questions:
What is DevCreek?
Do I have to pay to use DevCreek?
What is the difference between Open and Walled projects?
What are the different DevCreek project roles, and what do they allow me to do?
What is a DevCreek Agent?

Captured Data Questions:
What data is captured?
What happens to my data?
How do I download my own data?

Client Questions:
What is the client used for?
Which IDE's and languages do you support?
I use a laptop, will the DevCreek client work ok?
How do I stop data capture from one of my Eclipse projects?
How can I close a DevCreek project to further data?

Analytics Questions:
What is DevCreek Analytics?
How can I restrict access to my project's reports?

What is DevCreek?

DevCreek is a free service that collects project metrics and allows users to share data and analyses with broader communities. By providing real-time feedback and aggregating historical testing data, DevCreek is able to establish project- and community-based metrics to encourage good software development practices.

(See Developers and Team Leads, Managers or Researchers for more specific descriptions.)

Do I have to pay to use DevCreek?

No, as a Project Friend, Member or Contributor, registration and use of the service is free. For Project Administrators, DevCreek is also free for Open projects. For Walled projects, after a 60 day free period, DevCreek charges Project Administrators a nominal $200 storage fee per year, per project. For more information on these distinctions, please refer to What is the difference between Open and Walled projects?

For organizations with more in-depth data analysis, DevCreek offers commercial extensions to the basic free service. (See DevCreek Premium.)

What is the difference between Open and Walled projects?

There are two types of projects in the DevCreek world; Open or Walled. An Open project automatically allows other DevCreek users in the broader development community to see your project metrics and analytics. They can register interest as "Friends", and receive updates on your project as they happen.

A Walled project, on the other hand, limits visibility of your projects to those users that you explicitly invite to participate. With Open projects, you enjoy the benefits of broader input and interest. With Walled projects, you can work within a smaller, more confidential group of your own definition.

What are the different DevCreek project roles, and what do they allow me to do?

There are four different roles on a DevCreek project. You have to be a registered member of DevCreek to participate in these project roles. Any registered member of DevCreek can serve in any of these roles on different projects.

Role Name	Description
Administrator	Create, Update Delete Projects on the DevCreek system Maintain key project information Can view Project data and analytics Can download data for offline analyses Invite and remove Project Members and Contributors Responsible for paying for Walled project, or Premium fees
Contributor	Invited to participate on a Project by the Project Administrator Can submit Data to a Project Can view data, analytics as determined by the Project Administrator
Member	Invited to participate on Project by that Project's Administrator For Walled Projects you can view data, analytics as determined by the Project Administrator For Open projects you can view all data and analytics
Friend	You have expressed interest in participating in particular Project Can view all data and analytics for Open projects

What is a DevCreek Agent?

A DevCreek Agent is a client that gathers software development metrics and submits them to DevCreek through one of the system's public API's. They are plug-ins that live in a developers toolset that make it easy to gather and submit metrics data to the DevCreek site. For a current list of DevCreek Agents, please refer to the Metrics section of the main site.

What data is captured?

The DevCreek client captures a limited set events occurring during the testing process; test runs, use of the client, and so on. This is communicated to the server, where it can be used for the live scoreboard display, Analytics, and so on.

(See Captured Data for a fuller list of events captured.)

What happens to my data?

Testing behaviour is captured by the DevCreek client from within your IDE. The stream of reified captured events is then transmitted by the client to the DevCreek server as XML data. The server aggregates the data from all the team members of a project into a project-specific data repository. The collected data is then used for the real-time displays of project behaviour, and for the Analytics system.

How do I download my own data?

You can download the captured data for any project that you are a member. Data is in an XML format which could be fed into an alternative analysis mechanism, or just used as a backup.

The downloaded data is grouped by the client session that generated it. We do not stamp the data with the source account, but you can use the principal field to extract your own events from the rest of the team's members data.

To download your data from the Eclipse DevCreek feature:

Open the "TestCreek Perpsective", from the Eclipse Window->Open Perspective->Other... dialog
Choose the Analytics->Download Data Snapshot... menu item
Check Store XML Data Files
Note the Data Directory to which the downloaded data will be stored in
Click OK

The first run of this action might take some time to download all the data, but subsequent downloads will only download newer data.

What is the client used for?

The DevCreek client is responsible for capturing the stream of events related to the testing process, which provides the value for the DevCreek service. This stream of events can be used to feed the test run ticker, or allow team mates to be aware of what each other is working on.

The client runs within the developer's IDE, or as a part of the automated build process, to capture this direct source of events.

The client can also be extended to close the feedback cycle and provide real-time view of your current testing or that of the team.

Which IDEs and languages do you support?

Our goal is to be able to capture details of all the testing activity related to a project. This would include IDEs and build tools, automated and manual testing, programming and record-playback systems.

We currently support:

Eclipse 3.1 or later
- Java & JUnit
- Ruby & Test::Unit from RDT 0.81

If you would like to write a new client to submit captured events to the DevCreek server, please contact the team.

I use a laptop, will the DevCreek client work ok?

The Eclipse DevCreek client can currently handle brief periods without connectivity with the DevCreek server, and will queue up captured events until the server can be reached again. However, any unsent queued data will be lost if Eclipse is closed.

How do I stop data capture from one of my Eclipse projects?

The capture of testing activity data can be disabled at the Eclipse workspace level. Once disabled, no data associated with any of your Eclipse projects will be sent to the server. Usage information will still be sent to the server, and DevCreek view will reflect the actions of others, but no project specific data such as test class names or method names will be sent to the DevCreek server.

To disable the capturing of activity data within the current workspace:

Choose the Eclipse Workspace->Preferences... menu action
Select the TestCreek preference page
Uncheck the "Enable recording of observed events" control
Click OK

If you have one Eclipse project that you do want DevCreek to observe, and a second Eclipse project that it shouldn't, then you will have to have two workspaces. The first workspace will have capturing enabled, the second disabled. We expect to add a finer level of granularity in the future to the capturing process.

How can I close a DevCreek project to further data?

Once a project is complete it makes sense to stop further data from being submitted to its DevCreek project. For example a team member forgetting to re-configure their client to submit data to a new project would result in inappropriate data being sent to the old project, so complicating later analyses of the original project.

The Project Admin can set a DevCreek project to be concluded - so denying further data from being associated with the project.

Go to your My Account page
Choose a project by clicking over the Manage link associated with it from the project list for which you are the Project Admin
On the Project Management page, click Edit Details from the row of links below the project details
Check the Concluded stage
Click Save

What is DevCreek Analytics?

DevCreek Analytics is a tool to investigate and research testing behaviour. We have provided a number of different analyses to investigate the time spent fixing tests, or the effect on the testing process as it takes longer for a project to run all of their tests. These analyses can be run across your own project, or can be used to investigate industry wide correlations and trends.

The DevCreek server provides access to these reports for the community, generated hourly. The Eclipse client allows the developer to generate reports on their own projects, or to highlight changes to their own testing behaviour.

We are actively exploring the captured data to learn more about testing. If you have any ideas for what might be interesting, or a question you would like to be answered, please contact the team.

How can I restrict access to my project's reports?

By default, projects are considered Open, and as such their generated reports on the DevCreek website are visible to the internet. We believe that this greater level of transparency is for the benefit of the community in general and helps us all to learn and to improve. We recognize that this might be inappropriate for some organizations, and DevCreek Premium provides options to restrict general access to this data. (See also Privacy.)