Dimensions CM is Software Change and Configuration Management for Agile development, developed by Serena Software and now sold by OpenText.
N/A
Plastic SCM
Score 8.2 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Plastic SCM is a full stack version control system that aims to make software configuration easy. It focuses on enabling dev teams get work done by facilitating branching, diffing and merging. The vendor says that for those purposes it provides cross-platform apps and GUIs with: Branch explorer Diffing and merging tools (both syntactic and semantic) On-premises and cloud repo management Code review mergebots (last mile…
$6.95
per user
Pricing
Git
OpenText Dimensions CM
Plastic SCM
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Cloud Edition
$6.95
per user
Team Edition (on prem)
$9.95
per user
Enterprise Edition
$23.25
per user
Enterprise Edition (perpetual)
$595.00
per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Git
OpenText Dimensions CM
Plastic SCM
Free Trial
No
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
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* Educational institutions receive a substantial discount on Plastic SCM licensing fees
* Corporate/volume pricing is available
* For more information, please contact sales at sales@codicesoftware.com
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Git
OpenText Dimensions CM
Plastic SCM
Considered Multiple Products
Git
Verified User
Project Manager
Chose Git
Git is by far the best version control system out there. It's open source, free, and fast. No other version control system I've ever used has had all three features.
GIT is good to be used for faster and high availability operations during code release cycle. Git provides a complete replica of the repository on the developer's local system which is why every developer will have complete repository available for quick access on his system and they can merge the specific branches that they have worked on back to the centralized repository. The limitations with GIT are seen when checking in large files.
Serena CM is well suited to highly controlled, audited, and process driven environments. It will allow strict segregation of duties, and change traceability. If implemented correctly it will help you quickly build trusts with your auditors. It is also well suited to environments that require constant branching and merging. Due to the complexity of the product and learning curve for your development and operations team it may be overkill in a small shop with loose rules
Plastic SCM is well suited for the distributed development environment, where branching and merging can easily be handled. Its a good tool for version controlling, especially for a big team which is contributing to a big project simultaneously. Situation where Plastic SCM is not at all well suited are : If the project is smaller one and need to be handled by couple of people. So in that case setting up Plastic SCM and educating people to work on it is not at all efficient
Code Promotion: Dimensions CM allows supervisors to control changes to code, in that they delegate requests to developers, and act as a gatekeeper prior to promoting to the next environment. This functionality is configurable so you can set up a workflow that best fits the structure and requirements of your own company.
Code Repository for changes and versioning: Code can be checked out by item or by synchronizing folders. Code revisions can be compared against other revisions or work files. Item histories show which developers made which modifications, and which supervisor and operations personnel were involved in assigning the request and promoting the code to each environment. Additionally a pedigree will show a stream diagram which graphically displays branches and merges.
Deployment: Serena Change Management offers help automating deployment including integrations with SVN and Jenkins. Its newer versions also have a powerful graphical deployment automation tool (Serena Deployment Automation- SDA). It comes with a certain amount of licenses built-in. If you have a many nodes to deploy to there will be separate licensing costs for that.
The only major negative that I have encountered with Serena CM product is that the very power and flexibility of the tool means there is a risk that you will make a mess of things. In other words it gives you plenty of rope to tangle yourself with. I recommend careful, well thought out deployments implementing the built in roles and workflows that can be turned on and configured, using a consistent methodology.
My experience with the Serena help desk support has not been impressive. Though reasonably polite and diligent, the technicians were well trained, and often gave bad advise and terrible scripts. On several occasions I had to rewrite scripts they have me; if I had run them as provided they would have caused even more difficulties than the problem I was trying to solve. I speak of the support in the past tense because I conditioned myself not to call them, it was usually just easier to solve nay problems my self. They do have a good account management team though, and for any major issues you can go thru them.
Git has met all standards for a source control tool and even exceeded those standards. Git is so integrated with our work that I can't imagine a day without it.
I am not sure what the official Git support channels are like as I have never needed to use any official support. Because Git is so popular among all developers now, it is pretty easy to find the answer to almost any Git question with a quick Google search. I've never had trouble finding what I'm looking for.
I've used both Apache Subversion & Git over the years and have maintained my allegiance to Git. Git is not objectively better than Subversion. It's different. The key difference is that it is decentralized. With Subversion, you have a problem here: The SVN Repository may be in a location you can't reach (behind a VPN, intranet - etc), you cannot commit. If you want to make a copy of your code, you have to literally copy/paste it. With Git, you do not have this problem. Your local copy is a repository, and you can commit to it and get all benefits of source control. When you regain connectivity to the main repository, you can commit against it. Another thing for consideration is that Git tracks content rather than files. Branches are lightweight and merging is easy, and I mean really easy. It's distributed, basically every repository is a branch. It's much easier to develop concurrently and collaboratively than with Subversion, in my opinion. It also makes offline development possible. It doesn't impose any workflow, as seen on the above linked website, there are many workflows possible with Git. A Subversion-style workflow is easily mimicked.
Serena CM is superior to Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) in overall functionality, but does not have very good native integration with Microsoft. Therefore in a Microsoft centric shop with no audit needs ,TFS would be better. Otherwise I would choose Serena CM
Plastic has best integration with unity - zero issues, native, straightforward. GitHub feels more stable but for smaller and or indie teams plastic s version control feels much more under control - you click, you feel safe. moreover, there is no need for extra tools such as gitkraken, gitlab, Sourcetree, fork, etc. it is really easy to develop games this way.
Git has saved our organization countless hours having to manually trace code to a breaking change or manage conflicting changes. It has no equal when it comes to scalability or manageability.
Git has allowed our engineering team to build code reviews into its workflow by preventing a developer from approving or merging in their own code; instead, all proposed changes are reviewed by another engineer to assess the impact of the code and whether or not it should be merged in first. This greatly reduces the likelihood of breaking changes getting into production.
Git has at times created some confusion among developers about what to do if they accidentally commit a change they decide later they want to roll back. There are multiple ways to address this problem and the best available option may not be obvious in all cases.
Serena has facilitated our annual completion of various audit and technology control certifications. These certifications make a huge difference to our company's reputation and bottom line.
