This section describes the Mobile App Environment (MAE) and the installed tools the VA provides to mobile App development teams. VA maintains complete instructions and procedures for their use, which you can view when your Request is approved. If you have an MAE account, visit the internal sites Developer Help Home, Software Design Document and VAMF System Design for more information.
The Mobile App Environment (MAE)
The Web and Mobile Solutions Team (WMS) maintains the MAE, which is a development environment within VA networks. You can develop an approved App on the MAE and take advantage of its tools and services. You can develop an App in another environment, but you must upload its code to the MAE before VA can perform a Compliance Review.
MAE Tools
The code for VA Apps must reside in VA's Mobile App Environment (MAE). You can develop your code outside the MAE but you must upload it into the MAE for Verification and Validation (V&V) testing and compliance review. The following sections list the MAE tools:
Fortify
You can identify, fix and protect your App code from security vulnerabilities by using the MAE's Hewlett Packard Fortify installation. The Code Review during the Compliance Review stage also runs your code through Fortify.
Atlassian Stash
The MAE uses Atlassian Stash as an interface for hosted Git repositories.
Atlassian JIRA
The MAE uses Atlassian's JIRA issue tracking and App project management functions. Each approved VA App project has its own JIRA project installation which has a set of workflows and agile-style epics and stories to track an Apps progress through the development life cycle.
Confluence Wiki
The MAE uses Atlassian's Confluence wiki spaces as a collaborative authoring environment and document repository management. Each approved App project has its own wiki space as a document repository and for document revision control. This is where you author and store PMAS artifacts and other required documents.
Atlassian FishEye and Crucible
The MAE uses Atlassian FishEye and Crucible for code reviews between developers.
Jenkins Continuous Integration
The MAE uses the Jenkins Continuous Integration (CI) environment and build server.
VA Mobile Framework (VAMF)
The VA Mobile Framework (VAMF) provides the infrastructure to allow VA Apps to be hosted in a standard architectural framework. It provides software services, including authentication of users and retrieval and updating of data within VA. It provides an Internet accessible layer of services to isolate VA Apps from the VA infrastructure and provides secure access to those VA back end services. The VAMF security boundary includes all of the hardware and software infrastructure and each VA App deployed to that environment.
Health Adapter
The VAMF contains the Health Adapter software that provides its common services. The Mobile Health Platform (MHP) Health Adapter (or sometimes, HealthAdapter) is a middle-tier system designed to provide easy-to-consume, resource-oriented services, which are used while developing health care applications.
The Health Adapter services include security or content-related services, patient clinical data services, provider appointment calendar feeds and metric or audit recording services.
The Health Adapter has been designed to decouple the service endpoints, business logic and data sources from each other. This allows for multiple service endpoints and multiple data sources, including Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA). The concept of decoupling data sources makes it easier to utilize the Health Adapter for different needs.
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