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Each MettleCI Compliance rule can include extra metadata using a set of user-specified values which are referred to as ‘tags’. Each Compliance rule may specify zero or more ‘tags’ which are free-form text labels associated with each rule.
Tagging supports Rule Tagging provides improved rule metadata management in support of a number of functions:
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Identifies which asset type(s) each rule applies to. Currently a single rule (e.g. ‘Database Connect Not Auto Generate SQL’) needs to exist as four files within the Compliance repository (‘.pjb.grm’, ‘psc.grm’,. ‘sjb.grm’, and ‘ssc.grm’) with each file effectively repeating the rule but with a different file extension to associate it with the asset to which it can be applied. Tagging will replace this mechanism by moving the name of the asset type(s) to which a file can be applied from file extension to tags defined within the rule, thereby removing the need for multiple, redundant versions of the same file to be maintained within the Compliance repository. This capability also easily enables the future application of Compliance to non-DataStage asset types.
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use cases:
Identifying the ‘severity’ of each rule. The MettleCI tools that use Compliance results (the Workbench user interface and the mettleci compliance test CLI command) need to know how to respond to Compliance Rule breaches. Whether a rule’s breach should produce an abort (Fail) or informational (Warning) in Workbench or CI pipeline is currently defined (somewhat awkwardly) by the folder within which the rule exists in the repository. For NextGen this metadata would be better defined using tagging.
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Grouping Compliance Rules into ‘bundles’ of functionally related rules. This could enable users to report or test by functional area. Functional groups into which Compliance Rules could be bundled might be Performance, Security, Maintainability, etc. Tagging also permits a single rule to be associated with multiple functional areas, if required.
Rule Tagging provides improved rule metadata management in support of a number of use cases:
It enables Enabling the fine-grained sharing of rules across teams within organisations (i.e. tags could be used to identify which DataStage teams they apply to)
Define rules’ behaviour in different environments (e.g. Workbench vs. CI/CD plans)
Define Defining rules’ behaviour in different environments (e.g. Workbench vs. CI/CD plans)Updated pipeline examples demonstrate the use of tags to identify which rules inhibit the successful completion of CI.
Some notes on Tag behaviour:
Tags are case insensitive.
We strongly recommend that the values your use for Tags employ only alphanumeric characters (0-9, a-Z, A-Z) as we can’t guarantee the support for non-alphanumeric tags across all potential platforms and use cases.
The default behaviour of not specifying any ‘Include’ tags is that everything is included.
The default behaviour of not specifying any ‘Exclude’ tags is that nothing is excluded.
When no ‘Include’ and ‘Exclude’ tags are specified Compliance Rules are not scanned recursively (existing behaviour). When at least one tag is specified (either Include or Exclude), rules are scanned recursively.
You can use
*to match all tags so you can use*to include everything and leave Exclude tags blank. This will trigger recursive scanning of rules (different from leaving both blank which results in the existing, shallow, non-recursive behaviour).
The example CI/CD build pipelines that ship with MettleCI demonstrate the use of tags to identify which rules inhibit the successful completion of CI.
Rule Attributes
Here’s an example of a rule definition which incorporates some Tags.
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