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Summary: CAST AIP 8.3.1 introduces a number of features and changes as listed below.

Technology support changes

Please see Technology coverage changes in CAST AIP 8.3.x for more detailed discussion of this subject.

Upgrade

CAST Server Manager to be used instead of the CAST Update Tool

Changes have been made to CAST Server Manager in an effort to provide one tool that will meet all upgrade requirements: CAST AIP core upgrade and extension upgrade actions are now available for CAST AIP schemas installed with the Combined Installation option through one single menu option:

As such, the CAST AIP upgrade guide has been modified to take into account these changes, in particular:

Although the CAST AIP upgrade guide prioritises the use of CAST Server Manager to complete all upgrade processes through the new "Upgrade Combined Installation" option, the functionality introduced through this option is still in its infancy and the CAST AIP 8.3.1 release does not contain all required configuration files.

Therefore, to upgrade to CAST AIP 8.3.1, please continue to use the "legacy" method described in Step by step upgrade process - workaround method as follows:

  1. CAST Server Manager + Component Update option to upgrade your Measurement Service schema
  2. CAST Update Tool to upgrade your Combined Installation schemas (Management/Analysis/Dashboard Service schemas)
  3. CAST Server Manager + Manage Extensions option to upgrade extensions

However, if you wish to experiment with the new "Upgrade Combined Installation" option in CAST Server Manager, please contact Laurent Windels for more information before starting.

Upgrade batch file

The upgrade batch file (see Automating the CAST AIP Upgrade process) should not be used to upgrade to CAST AIP 8.3.1. The script contains known bugs which are being fixed for a future release.

Extensions

Extensions shipped with CAST AIP 8.3.x and installed as part of the upgrade/new installation

As part of CAST's drive to improve and speed up the frequency of software releases, a process of "externalizing" the source code delivery and analysis capabilities of CAST AIP has begun in CAST AIP 8.3.x. To this end various official CAST AIP extensions are shipped with CAST AIP 8.3.x and are installed automatically as part of the upgrade process and also when installing new CAST AIP "triplets". Please see Technology coverage changes in CAST AIP 8.3.x for more information.

Snapshot management

When deleting a snapshot (whether through the CAST Management Studio GUI or CLI (DeleteSnapshotsInList, DeleteSnapshotsWithinRange)), when changing the capture date on a snapshot (through the CAST Management Studio GUI), when performing a consolidate action on an older snapshot (through the CAST Management Studio GUI) or setting the capture date prior to existing snapshots for a snapshot (whether through the CAST Management Studio GUI or CLI), it is no longer necessary to perform a snapshot re-consolidation action to update data:

ActionNew behavior

Remove one or multiple older snapshots

If you remove an older snapshot (i.e. not the most recent) then the next snapshot will be updated:

  • delta and AEP/EFP metrics are recalculated, and the post process procedures that update schema tables required for dashboards are relaunched.
  • new data is also pushed to the associated Measurement Service schema (if one is associated to the Management Service schema for the Application).

Update Functional Date

If you update the functional date now, three snapshots will be updated:

  • the snapshot you updated
  • the previous next snapshot 
  • the new next snapshot

For these three snapshots, CAST AIP will:

  • recalculate the delta and AEP/EFP metrics, the post process procedures are launched
  • new data is also pushed to the associated Measurement Service schema (if one is associated to the Management Service schema for the Application).

If the snapshot you updated was already the latest, source code and object properties will be removed (as they no longer match with the new latest snapshot).

Consolidate an older snapshot

If you reconsolidate an older (i.e. not the most recent), then the next snapshot will be updated:

  • delta is recalculated, and the post process procedures that update schema tables required for dashboards are relaunched.
  • new data is also pushed to the associated Measurement Service schema (if one is associated to the Management Service schema for the Application).
Snapshot generation with a capture date that is before an existing snapshot

If you generate a snapshot, with a capture date that is before an existing snapshot, the existing snapshot will be updated:

  • delta is recalculated, and the post process procedures that update schema tables required for dashboards are relaunched.
  • new data is also pushed to the associated Measurement Service schema (if one is associated to the Management Service schema for the Application).

CAST Application Analytics / Engineering Dashboards / Rest API

User authentication / data authorization

An error in the example given in the roles.xml file (delivered with CAST Application Analytics / Engineering Dashboards and the Rest API) for configuring roles for LDAP groups has been corrected. In addition, the documentation has been updated as a result. The following pages have therefore been updated:

CAST Application Analytics Dashboard

Configurable Technical Size indicators

It is now possible to customize the list of Technical Size indicators (Number of Critical Violations, Number of Code Lines, Number of Files etc.) that are displayed for the drill down page available at Application level for the Technical Size tile (click to enlarge):

See CAST-AAD - Tile management for more information.

CAST Application Engineering Dashboard

Reset language option

The top user menu now has an additional drop down menu item called "Reset language". This allows a user to change the language of the text items in the dashboard, providing an administrator has configured the language:

See:

Violation details section

A new section has been added to the Source Code display called Violation details to display Violation Name along with the values of the Violation Details (i.e the "Associated Values"). See CAST Application Engineering Dashboard - CAST AED.

Change in behaviour of Risk Introduced tile

The way the Risk Introduced tile behaves has changed:

Education tab

A new Education tab has been added alongside the existing Action Plan and Exclusion tabs. This tab is designed to list Quality Rules for which particularly bad practice has been seen through violation investigations. Quality Rules can be added to the list to promote best practices or for monitoring purposes.

Note that this feature while present in CAST AIP 8.3.1 is not fully functional and should not be used. It will be available for use in CAST AIP 8.3.2.

CAST Management Studio

CLI

ImportAssessmentModel

The ImportAssessmentModel option introduced in CAST AIP 8.3.0 has been modified to remove the constraint on the naming of the .PMX file to be imported (there is now no constraint). See Automating CAST Management Studio tasks.

ConfigurePlatformPreferences

ActivateMeasureService

A new option is now available to activate a given Measurement Service (MEASURE schema) for the Management Service (MNGT schema) defined in the connection profile. When the Measurement Service is active, it is the target for any snapshot data that is generated in any Application associated with the parent Management Service (MNGT database), when you chose to upload snapshot data to the Measurement Service. See Automating CAST Management Studio tasks.

CAST Architecture Checker

Log file naming and path changes

A change has been implemented with regard to the naming and path of the CAST Architecture Checker log file:

In previous releases of CAST AIP, the CAST Architecture Checker log files:

CAST Transaction Configuration Center

Log file naming and path changes

A change has been implemented with regard to the naming and path of the CAST Transaction Configuration Center log file:

In previous releases of CAST AIP, the CAST Transaction Configuration Center log files:

Log: Function Points Computation report - includes Transaction Graph Adjustment information

The Function Points Computation report (which is part of the log produced when the "Compute" action is run) now contains information about the use of the Transaction Graph Adjustment feature:

First, these lines display the current statuses of whether Standard and/or Custom TF adjustments are enabled or disabled:

Then, if there is at least one link which has been adjusted, the counts of deleted, inverted, and added links are shown:

New Show Rules option in the GUI

A new "Show Rules' option has been added to the GUI to display a list of rules that the selected object matches:

This option can be accessed from the Transaction Configuration node when using the "Generate set..." buttons: