Glossary

This glossary provides terms and definitions for the HCL™ Accelerate software and products.

The following cross-references are used in this glossary:

See refers you from a non-preferred term to the preferred term or from an abbreviation to the spelled-out form.
See also refers you to a related or contrasting term.

A

activity: Activities include releases, events, and deployment plans that you develop, start, and complete with the product.
agent: A program that runs on a remote computer and communicates with the HCL™ Accelerate server. Agents run processes on deployment target systems.
agent relay: A communication proxy for agents that are located behind a firewall or in another network location.
API: An interface that allows an application program that is written in a high-level language to use specific data or functions of the operating system or another program.
Application: One or more computer programs or software components that provide a function in direct support of a specific business process or processes. See also application server.
application environment: A user-defined collection of resources that hosts an application. These application environments refer to environments that are created to be in the product.
application process: A process that is associated with an application. Unlike a component or generic process, an application process is created from application-level steps. Typically, an application process invokes component processes, and orchestrates multi-component deployments. See also component process, generic process, process.
artifact: A deployable item such as a file, image, database, configuration material, or anything else that is associated with a software project. By default, artifacts are stored in CodeStation repository.
authentication realm: An authentication realm manages users and determines user identity. It retrieves information from sources such as LDAP servers and Keystone identity services.
auto task: A task that starts automatically they are eligible to run. Examples of auto task types are HCL™ Launch, Continuous Delivery pipeline, email, and Slack.

B

blackout: A setting that prevents deployments and snapshots from being scheduled. Blackouts solely affect the environment and application that they are applied to.

C

change: An artifact that represents a generalized notion of a development work product, such as a task, defect report, or enhancement request. See also initiative.
component: A representation of deployable items and the user-defined processes that operate on them, usually by deploying them.
component process: A process defined for the deployment of components.
component version: See version.

D

dashboard: A displayed collection of user-defined data filters and metric charts. Dashboards are used to analyze project data for their quality and efficiency.
dependent task: A task depends on another task to finish before it starts. The task that a dependent task waits for is called a prerequisite task. Dependent tasks cannot start until all its prerequisite tasks are resolved. Dependent tasks are used to ensure that tasks run in the specified order.
deployment: The activities used to deliver a software project to a deployment target. Typically, you run deployments for each stage of your release lifecycle, ending with the production stage when the software becomes generally available. The activities that are performed during a deployment, called tasks, are defined in deployment plans. You start a deployment by starting one of the plan's eligible tasks. You complete a deployment by resolving all the tasks in the deployment plan.
dots: A value stream unit of work, such as a pull request, build, or deployment. Units of work can be combined, such as commits and pull requests, which significantly enhances the data quality of value streams.
duration: The time a task takes to run. Duration is measured from the time a task starts until it is resolved. When you create some task types, you can estimate its expected duration. Duration is reported in minutes.

E

environment: A collection of resources that identify the components that can be deployed by the parent application and the agents that do the work.
events: Release-related activities that are applied to releases and tracked with a calendar. You can use events to organize your releases and other time-dependent activities, such as holidays and blackouts.
execution pattern: The order in which tasks in a deployment plan become eligible to run. By default, a plan's execution pattern is sequential. Sequential tasks run in order beginning with the first task in the plan. You can combine tasks into groups and assign the parallel execution pattern to the group. Parallel tasks can run in any order and run simultaneously.

G

gate: A requirement that must be met before an application can move on to the next stage.
generic process: Processes that are designed to run outside typical component or application processing. See also application process, component process, process.
group: A logical container that serves as a mechanism to grant permissions to multiple users.

I

initative: An action to take for the change occurred.
insights: A set of related features such as metric data dashboards, reports, and the application portfolio.
integration: Regular communication between HCL™ Accelerate and external products and services. Communication with integrated products can be bidirectional.

L

lifecycle: The phases in a release. A lifecycle is a template for the stages of work in a release.
lock: A means of preventing changes being made to a release.
logical environment: A collection of physical environments.

M

manual task: A release related task that users must manually complete. See also auto task.
metric data: Tools, such as charts and graphs that are applied to project data to assess project quality and progress.
metric definition: A JSON object that defines expected value types and chart default settings.
milestone: A significant event in a project or process that is used to determine progress toward goals.

P

particles: See dots.
phase: An organizational segment within a value stream containing the stages, such as "Planning," or "Development,", that define process flow within that group.
physical environment: An actual deployable location, server, hardware, and so on.
pipeline: A sequence of stages that retrieve input and run applications and jobs, such as builds, tests, and deployments.
plug-in: A separately installable software module that adds function to an existing program, application, or interface.
portfolio: A collection of application information in one location where you can analyze the data with metric charts and graphs.
process: In HCL™ Launch, processes define automation activities, such as deploying components.
property: A variable that specifies a value that is provided during process deployment and is associated with a specific HCL™ Accelerate object. An individual property's value can be accessed only by certain types of related objects, such as environments, processes, and components.

Q

quality: A user-defined attribute that serves as a gate for applications to enter phases.

R

release: The delivery of multiple applications through one or more phases of a lifecycle.
resource: A user-defined construct that is based on the architectural model of HCL™ Accelerate. A resource represents a deployment target.
role: A job function that identifies the tasks that a user can perform and the resources to which a user has access. A user can be assigned one or more roles.

S

segment: A period of time in a deployment plan. Deployment plans can group tasks into segments to specify when tasks are run relative to each other.
snapshot: A collection of specific versions of components. Typically, a snapshot represents a set of component versions that are known to work together.
stage: In the value stream, a subset of a phase that contains data from integrated tools.
swim lane: A representation of value stream data in tabular form where the columns represent value stream stages, and the rows represent users.

T

tag: A label that you can apply to tasks or releases. When applied to tasks, tags can determine task applicability for a given deployment. When applied to releases, tags can be used to organize and filter releases.
task: Represents a business-meaningful activity that has starting and ending points and a measurable duration. Durations are used to estimate deployment times. You add tasks to deployment plans. When you run a deployment, you complete the tasks in the plan
task group: A combination of two or more tasks that are associated into a group. When you form a group, you define the group's execution pattern as sequential or parallel.
team: A team is a collection of users and groups.
token: A particular message or bit pattern that signifies permission or temporary control to transmit over a network.

U

user: A representation of an account on the server. Users can be members of teams and groups. User can be created in HCL™ Accelerate server or import users from an external authentication realm, including an LDAP, Active Directory, or SSO provider.

V

value stream: A representation of the objects. The value stream provides a strategic window into your project workflow.

version: A representation of an HCL™ Launch application snapshot.