Roles page - Developers

Rational staff, Staff, IBM, Software Group

This article is brought to you by the Rational staff at developerWorks.

Summary: This list of content resources is geared towards Developers.

Date: 23 Sep 2003
Level: Introductory
Activity: 798 views

Rational recognizes the many different talents it takes to make a development project successful. Every development team has a mix of roles and responsibilities working towards project success. One key role for successful software or systems development is the developer role. We break this role into four distinct areas: software development, software architecture, systems engineering, and database design. We realize that teams vary in their role designations, so while you may not be using one of the specific titles below, you may still be performing this role on your team.

Software developer: Responsible for designing and implementing an executable code solution, testing the resulting components, and analyzing runtime profiles to debug errors that might exist. A software developer may also be responsible for creating the software's architecture and/or employing rapid application development tools.
Software architect: Responsible for creating and maintaining the overall structure and layout of a software system's components and their interfaces within and outside of the system.
Systems engineer: Analyzes the role of the system in the broader enterprise, defines the requirements the system needs to meet, in terms of services and non-functional requirements, defines the architecture of the system to meet the requirements. Systems architects may also be doing similar activities in their roles.
Database designer: Responsible for leading the coordination and collection of database requirements, documenting, organizing and communicating the requirements for the database, modeling the database architecture and ensuring it supports the business needs. Examples of other titles/roles that might be doing these tasks include database analysts, data modelers, or data architects.

Software developer

As a software developer, you may find yourself performing any or all of the following activities:

Architecture and design
Coding / implementation / construction
Component testing
Runtime analysis

Rational has a solution for each of these activities based on a set of integrated tools, online resources, and professional services.

The right product for your environment

Rational offers tools that work in your particular software development environment. Based on the general environment choices found in the left side of the table below, select a link on the right side that best describes your detailed development environment.

Your general development environment	Your detailed development environment
Java	WebSphere Studio Eclipse Other Java IDE Architected rapid application development
Microsoft Languages	Visual Studio .NET Visual Studio 6
UNIX / Linux	Solaris/HP-UX Linux
Cross-Platform	Embedded/Real-time Ada-based

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This article is brought to you by the Rational staff at developerWorks.

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