Skip to Main Content
IBM Sustainability Software - Ideas Portal


This portal is to open public enhancement requests against the products and services belonging to IBM Sustainability Software. To view all of your ideas submitted to IBM, create and manage groups of Ideas, or create an idea explicitly set to be either visible by all (public) or visible only to you and IBM (private), use the IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com).


Shape the future of IBM!

We invite you to shape the future of IBM, including product roadmaps, by submitting ideas that matter to you the most. Here's how it works:

Search existing ideas

Start by searching and reviewing ideas and requests to enhance a product or service. Take a look at ideas others have posted, and add a comment, vote, or subscribe to updates on them if they matter to you. If you can't find what you are looking for,

Post your ideas
  1. Post an idea.

  2. Get feedback from the IBM team and other customers to refine your idea.

  3. Follow the idea through the IBM Ideas process.


Specific links you will want to bookmark for future use

Welcome to the IBM Ideas Portal (https://www.ibm.com/ideas) - Use this site to find out additional information and details about the IBM Ideas process and statuses.

IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com) - Use this site to view all of your ideas, create new ideas for any IBM product, or search for ideas across all of IBM.

ideasibm@us.ibm.com - Use this email to suggest enhancements to the Ideas process or request help from IBM for submitting your Ideas.

Status Future consideration
Created by Guest
Created on Jun 3, 2019

Make ContextPattern pluginMethods more useful, flexible and effective

The syntax provided for specifying plug-in methods to extend ContextPatterns makes them hard to use. When specified, they replace both the "relation" and "token_name" fields in the context pattern, for example:

*,{swm}Swimlane,{cts]pluginMethod:getSwimlaneContents

The problem with this is that it is not possible to filter the return from the plugin method. If we wish to (in the example shown) separately access swimlane elements which are CallOperations, CallBehaviors and Actions, we need to write THREE plugin methods:

*,{swm}Swimlane,{cts]pluginMethod:getSwimlaneCallOperations
*,{swm}Swimlane,{cts]pluginMethod:getSwimlaneCallBehaviours
*,{swm}Swimlane,{cts]pluginMethod:getSwimlaneActions

This gets very unmanageable very quickly. A better approach would be to treat a plugin method as though it is a "relationship" rather than a "relationship:token_name" pair. In this case, we would be able to flexibly access different types of element with a single plugin method:

*,{swm}Swimlane,{cts]pluginMethod(getSwimlaneContents):CallOperation
*,{swm}Swimlane,{cts]pluginMethod(getSwimlaneContents):CallBehavior
*,{swm}Swimlane,{cts]pluginMethod(getSwimlaneContents):State

NB: The request does not specifically relate to getting the contents of swimlanes, which is used only as an example. This request is for a general improvement to plugin methods which will mean we can provide many fewer, much more useful extensions.

Idea priority High
  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Oct 13, 2020

    This RFE may be implemented in a forthcoming release under a program to enhance Rhapsody's support Systems Engineering.