Please see Technology coverage changes in CAST AIP 8.3.x for more detailed discussion of this subject.
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 as follows:
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. |
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.
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.
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:
| Action | New 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:
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Update Capture Date | If you update the capture date, three snapshots will be updated:
For these three snapshots, CAST AIP will:
If the snapshot you updated was previously the latest, source code and object properties will be removed from the CAST Dashboard Service schema (as they no longer match with the new latest snapshot). Data in the CAST Analysis Service will remain as before. Therefore data in the two schemas will no longer correspond. Example of impact of changing the capture date: If three snapshots exist as follows:
An object <OBJECT_LAST> was added in snapshot S3, and so it is marked as ADDED in the snapshot S3 because it was not there in the previous snapshot S2. If the functional date is now changed as follows (capture date changed on S3):
then the snapshots are reordered as follows:
<OBJECT_LAST> will still be marked as ADDED in the snapshot S3 which is no longer the latest snapshot because its functional date has been updated. S2 is now the latest snapshot and it is compared to the previous snapshot which is now S3. Because object <OBJECT_LAST> wasn't present in the S2 snapshot, then it will be shown as 'DELETED' in S2 when compared to S3, even though <OBJECT_LAST> is part of the most recent analysis and version of the source code that exists in the CAST Analysis Service schema. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Consolidate an older snapshot | If you reconsolidate an older (i.e. not the most recent), then the next snapshot will be updated:
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| 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:
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An error in the example given in the roles.xml file (delivered with Health Dashboard / Engineering Dashboard 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:
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 Health Dashboard tile management for more information.
The "Can't access" link that was previously available by default on the login screen (this link enables a user who is not able to log in - for example because they have forgotten their login credentials or if they have not yet been granted access - to send an email to the dashboard administrator requesting access) has now been removed by default. If you want to re-enable this option, please set the "requestAccess" option to true in the cmp.json file. See Health Dashboard json configuration options for more information.
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:
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").
The way the Risk Introduced tile behaves has changed:
A new Education tab has been added alongside the existing Action Plan and Exclusion tabs. This tab is designed to list Rules for which particularly bad practice has been seen through violation investigations. 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. |
The "Can't access" link that was previously available by default on the login screen (this link enables a user who is not able to log in - for example because they have forgotten their login credentials or if they have not yet been granted access - to send an email to the dashboard administrator requesting access) has now been removed by default. If you want to re-enable this option, please set the "requestAccess" option to true in the ced.json file. See ED - Dashboard wide configuration options in json for more information.
It is no longer possible to configure the weight and criticality of an Architecture Model's associated Quality Rule in the CAST Management Studio (previously this was possible in the Architecture Model editor or in the Architecture Models tab of the Application editor. Weight and Criticality are now configured directy in CAST Architecture Checker. See GUI: configuring model properties below.
In an upgrade scenario:
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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.
Two new parameters have been added for this command line option to enable the automatic configuration of the LISA and LTSA folders - see Automating CAST Management Studio tasks:
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.
It is now possible to change the properties of a model in CAST Architecture Checker - for example to configure the documentation fields or to set the Weight and/or Criticality of the associated Quality Rule:
Items updated here will then be visible in the Engineering Dashboard (click to enlarge):
Note that it is no longer possible to configure the weight and criticality of the model's associated Quality Rule in the CAST Management Studio. |
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:
The Transaction Graph Adjustment feature introduced in CAST AIP 8.3.0 is now taken into account during the computation of Transaction Risk Index (TRI) and during Function Point computation. In CAST AIP 8.3.0, it was only taken into account during Function Point computation.
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:
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:
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:
The following table lists all bugs fixed in CAST AIP 8.3.1
| Call ID | Technology | Component/S | Features | Situation | Symptoms | Internal ID |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10594; 10595 | ABAP | CMS Snapshot/Analysis - Run Copy Paste Metrics Calculation | When looking at the results of the Quality Rules "Avoid Artifacts with high Commented-out Code Lines/Code Lines ratio" and "Avoid Too Many Copy Pasted Artifacts" for versions Vn and Vn+1. | Violation counts for these Quality Rules are inconsistent even though the source code has not changed between versions Vn and Vn+1. | SCRAIP-29524 | |
| 10768 | .NET - C# | CMS Snapshot/Analysis | When looking at the results of the Quality Rules "Avoid Artifacts with high Commented-out Code Lines/Code Lines ratio" and "Avoid Too Many Copy Pasted Artifacts" for versions Vn and Vn+1. | Violation counts for these Quality Rules are inconsistent even though the source code has not changed between versions Vn and Vn+1. | SCRAIP-29821 | |
| 10977 | JEE - Java | CMS Snapshot/Analysis - Run Analyzer | When running a "test" analysis on JEE source code. | The analysis fails with the error: "Failed to load action 'JEEAnalyzerActionNew'" | SCRAIP-30067 | |
| 9995 | Mainframe - Cobol | CMS Snapshot/Analysis - Run Analyzer | When looking at the results of a Mainframe Cobol analysis and the Quality Rule 5112 "Avoid undocumented sections". | The Quality Rule 5112 "Avoid undocumented sections" is being falsely violated due to a bug in the analyzer where comments are not extracted from copybooks when programs are expanded. As such, sections and paragraphs coming from copybooks do not have any comment and are therefore considered as violating the Quality Rule. | SCRAIP-28659 | |
| JEE - JSP | When attempting to package JEE source code that includes Maven pom.xml configuration files. | The CAST Delivery Manager Tool reports the error: "Error Parsing Maven Project". This was caused by the presence of a double BOM character in the pom.xml. | SCRAIP-29893 | |||
| N/A | When attempting to package source code containing Eclipse .project files formatted in UTF-8. | The CAST Delivery Manager Tool does not detect the .project file and no explanation is given. | SCRAIP-29908 |