Contents

• Dimensions CM 14.x
• Dimensions CM 12.x
• Dimensions CM 2009.x
• Dimensions CM 10.x
• Fixed Issues
• Known Issues
• Legal Notice

14.4 |14.3.3 |14.3.2 | 14.3.1 | 14.3 | 14.2.0.2 | 14.1.0.4

New Features in Dimensions CM 14.4

Release date: 10th January 2018

Support for PostgreSQL

Dimensions CM 14.4 supports PostgreSQL, an open source object-relational database management system (ORDBMS). For information about using PostgreSQL with CM, see the following sections in these documents:

Installation Guides (Windows and UNIX)

• Migrating from Serena Runtime to PostgreSQL
• Preparing a PostgreSQL Database
• Installing a Server with a PostgreSQL Database

System Administration Guide

• PostgreSQL Backup and Recovery

Pulse

• Repository browser: browse the code in a CM repository and view the contents of folders and files. You can view the current or previous versions of a stream. 
• Experts (plugins), new and improved including:
  • Maven
  • Docker
  • Capture built artefacts to DA, CM, a directory, or a remote network server.
  • Notification
  • Script
• Executors: an executor is an instance of Pulse that is connected to a database, executors on different machines can connect to the same database. You can configure an executor by defining:
  • Tools that describe a machine's properties, for example, a specific operating system or network location.
  • Tools required by steps on a chain, for example, the location and configuration of tools such as a specific compiler or Maven.
• Request improvements, including:
  • External links, for example, the URL of a web site or the value of an SBM ticket related to the request.
  • Related design parts and requests.
  • Create a new request based on an existing request (priming a request).
• Chain improvements, including:
  • Separate pages for results, configuration, and steps.
  • For each chain run, view its details and logs.
  • Logs have separate tabs for each category: Console, Findings, Measurements, Activity, Changesets, Requests, and Contents.
  • Import and export chains.
• Review improvements, including:
  • Related requests are displayed and the summary of the first one is expanded.
  • In the Activity section, filter the information that is displayed such as: comments added by reviewers, the results of experts that ran on the changesets associated with the review, or display all information.
  • Display the previous and current revisions of a file unified in the same column, or side-by-side in separate columns.
  • Enhancements to the way that white space is considered in differencing.
  • Ability to "mention" users who are not included in a review, for example, you want the opinions of other developers.
  • Link to the stream version (in the repository browser) where a file revision was made.
• Query language and global search enhancements.
• Changesets enhancements, including:
  • Changeset health is displayed visually using a combination of the expert opinions of the changes and the review state.
  • Expert findings are displayed in the Chain Runs section of changeset pages and associated reviews.
• On card walls, save space by displaying compact cards and hiding metrics and charts. You can also group cards by request owners.
• New reports that display information about:
  • Changeset creation and health.

  • Request creation.

  • Reviews created by changeset deliveries.

Ignore Items during a Delivery

You can exclude specific files, folders, and file types from deliveries, for example, backup files and built artifacts. To exclude items you define ignore rules in a .dmignore file. Each location (a folder or directory) has a single .dmignore file but you can have multiple ignore files across a hierarchy of folders. You can also apply ignore rules recursively across subfolders.

The DELIVER and SHELVE commands support a new /NOIGNORE qualifier that allows you to skip restrictions specified in .dmignore files.

Note For the web client, only supported with Web Client Tools (not Java applets).

Undo Delivery

You can roll back the delivery of files and folders to a stream or project. For example, you deliver changes but discover problems in the code and decide to remove the changes. An Undo operation:

• Creates a new changeset with the reverted changes, which preserves the full history.
• Undoes an entire changeset, not individual item revisions.
• Only makes changes in a repository and does not update local work areas.

This feature is available in all clients. In the command-line client use the UNDO command.

Revert from Work Area

You can remove the changes in a work area associated with a stream and replace them with the previous versions. For example, you have made changes locally and delivered them to a stream, but subsequently you decide to revert the changes in the work area.

This feature is available in all clients. In the command-line client, the UPDATE command has a new /UNDO qualifier.

Note For the web client, o nly supported with Web Client Tools (not Java applets).

Visual Studio Integration

• Dimensions Explorer (previously known as Serena Explorer) has been completely redesigned and displays information about your Visual Studio solutions and projects that are under CM control. Each node is a solution context that displays the solution name and the product and stream or project. Dimensions Explorer displays views that are applicable to the current context, for example:
  • Streams and projects
  • Requests
  • Changesets
  • Reviews (if Pulse is enabled)
  • Baselines
  • Outgoing (items that you have modified, added, and deleted)

• The integration now uses the currently selected Visual Studio theme.
• The Requests panel has been redesigned to look the same as the Reviews panel. It is much easier to find requests and switch between:
  • The requests in your inbox.
  • All the requests in all stream and projects in the current product.
  • Your working list.

Eclipse Integration

Serena Explorer is now called Dimensions Explorer.

Deliver, Merge, and Shelve Wizards Improvements

The wizards have been extensively redesigned:

• You can specify which work area to deliver from.
• If you select a subfolder, its path is highlighted.
• If you select a work area that is not associated with a stream, you can select a stream to deliver to.
• The include and exclude local files filters have moved to the Advanced section.
• The list of changes now displays the conflict type and default resolution (if applicable).
• The Default Options and Selection Options tabs are now panels.

Pulse in Clients

The following Pulse features are integrated into the desktop client, and the Visual Studio and Eclipse IDEs:

• Reviews: display reviews for a stream or project, review code changes, make comments, and collaborate with team members.

• Repository browser: browse the code in a repository and view the contents of folders and files.
• Changesets panels/views: provides an indication of changeset health and displays any associated reviews. Use the Open Details context command to view the details of a changeset.

Desktop Client Improvements

• Customizing what columns are displayed is now much easier: right-click any column and select the ones you want to display.
• The user interfaces of Project Merge and Project Compare have been refreshed.
• The design parts view has been redesigned.
• Other changes:
  • Ctrl+C now works in Changeset and Item History dialog boxes.
  • You can customize the Properties dialog when it is open instead of using the Customize Views dialog.
  • Refreshes quicker and is more responsive.
  • Views and navigation are now more responsive.

New Features in Serena Dimensions CM 14.3.3

Release date: 24th May 2017

Dimensions CM Server HTTP Connector

HTTP/S may be required for security reasons or for compatibility with network infrastructure such as proxies and firewalls. This is particularly true where the connection between a Dimensions CM server and clients goes over a public or virtual private network. The Dimensions CM Server HTTP Connector allows clients and agents to connect to a server using the HTTP/S network protocols instead of the default Standard Dimensions Protocol (SDP). The connector accepts network connections using HTTP/S and forwards the traffic to the server.

On Windows there is a new service, Serena Dimensions HTTP Connector, that opens port 80 and starts automatically.

Note The HTTP/S connector is only supported on Windows and Linux64.

For details see the Dimensions CM System Administration Guide.

Web Client Tools and Removal of Support for Java Applets

The web client uses a Java applet for version management operations in work areas, such as update and deliver. If your environment does not allow Java, or you are using a browser that does not support Java applets, you can use Web Client Tools instead on Windows. Web Client Tools are disabled by default, for information about enabling and configuring them see the Dimensions CM System Administration Guide.

For information about installing and using Web Client Tools on your machine, see the online help or the Dimensions CM User's Guide.

Remove Unused VDA Records

Information about the status and history of deployment jobs is stored in VDA records in a database. Use the RVDA command to remove unused records of deleted areas. For details see Dimensions CM Command-Line Reference.

New Features in Serena Dimensions CM 14.3.2

Release date: 31st October 2016

Dimensions CM Git Connector

The Dimensions CM Git Connector brings central control and security to teams using Git, allowing them to store code in a CM stream. Streams can be shared by developers using Git or Dimensions CM. For details see the Dimensions CM Git Connector User's Guide.

Request Planning

Various improvements including:

• Separate links to backlogs, iterations, and the request catalog on the product sidebar.
• Ability to move requests between backlogs in both directions.
• Request titles are more visible in backlogs and iterations.
• Flat ranking view of a backlog.
• Improvements to how you open the right-hand view and display a backlog or iteration.
• Burndown chart on individual request pages.
• On an iteration the Card Wall button is now a tab.
• When actioning a request, you can now search for users to delegate the request to.
• Show, download, add, and remove request attachments.
• Display and filter a request's action history.

Dimensions CM Pulse

• WhiteSource expert: automatically identifies all the open source components and dependencies in your build by cross-referencing against WhiteSource’s database of open source repositories.
• Product page: filter the list of streams
• Review pages: keyboard shortcuts
• Changeset graph: only display favorite streams
• Expert chains: schedule hourly

New Features in Serena Dimensions CM 14.3.1

Release date: 31st August 2016

Archive, Retrieval, and Transfer Facilities

Archive, Retrieval, and Transfer (ART) Facilities, including TBO/TBI, are now supported, for details see the Dimensions CM System Administration Guide.

Note Only supported on Oracle.

Dimensions Build

If you use Dimensions Build you must update your scheduler passwords as the method used to encrypt them has changed.

New Features in Serena Dimensions CM 14.3

Release date: 26th May 2016

Request planning

Integration with Serena Deployment Automation

Integration with Docker

Dimensions CM Pulse

Delegate personal streams

New commands

LDAP synchronization

Eclipse IDE Integration with Apache Maven

HP Quality Center

VRS data caching

Replicator

Authentication and ALF Events

Request Planning

You can now manage your team's requests, using Agile views, in Dimensions CM Pulse. Request planning enables you to:

• Organize requests into backlogs.
• Execute requests in iterations.
• View metrics.
• Visualize and track the status of requests.
• Manage the movement of requests between iterations.
• Integrate with Dimensions CM request lifecycles.

Request planning can include:

• Backlogs: a prioritized hierarchy of epics, features, and requests.
• Epics: large units of work that typically are broken down into a smaller units, such as features and requests.
• Features: key components of a product.
• Requests: a single unit of work that is equivalent to a story in Agile work management. Existing requests are consumed from Dimensions CM. If you create a new request in Pulse it is visible in all CM clients.
• Iterations: one development cycle (a sprint), typically one to two weeks. An iteration includes the backlog requests your team are confident they can complete during the sprint.

For more information see the Pulse Help.

Integration with Serena Deployment Automation

You can optionally install Serena Deployment Automation (SDA) and use it, instead of Dimensions Deployment, to promote or demote baselines. The benefits of using SDA include:

• Easy configuration and management of deployments.
• Deployment processes can execute on multiple machines.
• Automatic promotion through an SDA pipeline.
• Single sign on between Dimensions CM and SDA.

For details see the Dimensions CM Deployment Guide.

The following commands have been updated to support SDA:

• PMBL/DMBL: promote and demote a baseline to SDA.
• DNP: create a product and map it to an SDA application.
• UPROD: a new command to update an existing product and map it to an SDA application.

For details see the Dimensions CM Command-Line Reference.

Dimensions CM web services have also been updated to support SDA. For details see the Dimensions CM Developer's Reference.

Integration with Docker

The integration with Docker provides a Docker Private Registry and enables you to:

• Store and version control Docker images using Dimensions CM requests. Changes to images over time are recorded so that you can recall specific versions later.
• Use CM privileges and roles assignments to control which images can be pulled (downloaded). An image is only visible to the user who created it but is available to other users after it has been approved.

For details about using the Docker integration see the Dimensions CM Docker Registry Guide.

The integration with Docker is installed and licensed separately from Dimensions CM. For details contact Serena Software.

Dimensions CM Pulse

In addition to request planning many enhancements have been made to Dimensions CM Pulse, including:

• Navigation, usability, and security improvements
• Support for favorite streams
• Ability to move products between suites
• Filtering of activity feeds
• Highlighting of merge and branch lines on the changesets graph
• Expert chain output logs

• Script expert: enables you to specify an operating system command or the path to a file.
• HP Fortify SCA expert: analyzes the source code of an application for security issues.
• Halt on Failure expert: stops a chain if the previous expert in the chain failed.

Delegate Personal Stream

You can delegate a personal stream to another user and change ownership of the stream. For example, you are switching to a different task and want to delegate the changes in a personal stream to another user. See the Dimensions CM User's Guide.

Note

• The privilege Update Files from Project/Stream is not required to create a personal stream.
• If you are using the Item browse privilege to control access to items :
  • Review the settings of the privilege Update Files from Project/Stream and check that it is not granted by mistake to the originators of personal streams; if it is granted, originators can fetch all personal stream items.
  • The originator of a personal stream may automatically be granted the role WORKSET-MANAGER for the new stream. For details about the WORKSET-MANAGER role see the chapter Privileges and Roles in the Process Configuration Guide.

New Commands

The following new command have been added to dmcli, the Dimensions CM command-line interface:

• DLGS: Delegate Personal Stream

For details see the Dimensions CM Command-Line Reference.

LDAP Synchronization

When you authenticate against an LDAP server you can now optionally synchronize Dimensions CM groups and LDAP groups. Synchronizing groups has these advantages:

• Group members are automatically synchronized from LDAP to CM.
• Groups are automatically created in CM if they do not exist.
• Users are automatically added to CM groups.

For details see Appendix A in the Dimensions CM System Administration Guide.

Eclipse IDE Integration with Apache Maven

The CM Eclipse IDE now supports M2Eclipse providing a tight integration for Apache Maven.

HP Quality Center

HP ALM Quality Center versions 11 and 12 are now supported.

VRS Data Caching

The Versioned Repository Schema (VRS) data cache is a major new performance optimization feature, first introduced in Dimensions CM 14.2.0.2. The Dimensions CM server pre-caches VRS data into a directory on disk. Pre-caching is automatic when a project, stream, or baseline is accessed for the first time. The main benefits of data caching are improved performance when:

• Opening, or switching between, projects, streams, and baselines.
• Performing operations such as update, deliver, create baseline, create stream, and merge.

The Dimensions CM administrator can manually pre-cache specific projects, streams, and baselines. For more information, and details of where data cache files are stored, see KB article S141604.

Replicator

Replicator is now supported, for details see the Dimensions CM System Administration Guide.

Authentication and ALF Events

If you are not using SSO, ALF event authentication user credentials are contained in this XML node:

\EventNotice\EventNotice\Base\User\ALFSecurity\UsernameToken

For details see Application Lifecycle Framework Events in the Dimensions CM Developer's Reference.

New Features in Serena Dimensions CM 14.2.0.2

Release date: 4th March 2016

Replicator

VRS data caching

Personal streams

Shelving

Cherrypicking requests

Dimensions CM Pulse enhancements

Stream and project selection enhancements

Security enhancements

Desktop client user interface improvements

New dmcli commands

Updates to dmcli commands

Serena Deployment Automation

Dimensions CM Bridge enhancements

SVN migration with changesets

Agent auto update

IDE performance enhancements

RESTful API web services

Viewing execution logs

Replicator

Replicator is now supported, for details see the Dimensions CM System Administration Guide.

VRS Data Caching

This release introduces a major new performance optimization feature, the Versioned Repository Schema (VRS) data cache. The Dimensions CM server pre-caches VRS data into a directory on disk. Pre-caching is automatic when a project, stream, or baseline is accessed for the first time. The main benefits of data caching are improved performance when:

• Opening, or switching between, projects, streams, and baselines.
• Performing operations such as update, deliver, create baseline, create stream, and merge.

The Dimensions CM administrator can manually pre-cache specific projects, streams, and baselines. For more information, and details of where data cache files are stored, see KB article S141604.

Personal Streams

Personal streams are private development branches in a repository that are only visible to the originator. Personal streams enable you to:

• Isolate work from an existing public stream.
• Work in a dedicated personal stream until your changes are ready to be merged back into a public stream.
• Create a new stream based on a work area.

For more details see the Dimensions CM User's Guide.

Shelving

Shelving enables you to store local changes in a personal stream and optionally remove the changes from a work area.

Shelve changes and reset a work area

You can remove changes from a work area that you do not want to deliver to the associated stream. For example, the changes are not complete but you need to interrupt your current work, set aside the changes, and switch to a different task using the same work area. After the shelving operation is complete you reset the work area so that it is identical to the latest repository content.

Backup changes

When you are sharing a stream with other developers but are not ready to deliver your local changes, you can backup your work by committing it to a personal stream. This creates a snapshot of the work area at that point in time. When creating backups you keep the local changes and do not reset the work area. When you are ready to resume work on the shelved changes you can restore them by merging the personal stream back into the work area.

For more details see the Dimensions CM User's Guide.

Cherrypicking Requests

When you merge changes between streams you can select changes that are related to specific requests. This is commonly known as cherrypicking or backporting. For example, you have delivered multiple sets of changes to a stream but only want to merge one specific set of changes into a different stream.

For more details see the Dimensions CM User's Guide.

Dimensions CM Pulse Enhancements

The following enhancements have been made to Dimensions CM Pulse:

Suites and Products

Administrators can organize development work into a hierarchy of suites and products.

• A suite is a collection of related software products, for example, Banking or Insurance. A suite can contain one or more products, for example, Life Insurance and Health Insurance.
• A product is the same as a Dimensions CM product and is a major unit of software development. A product is typically a collection of CM streams, for example, the product Life Insurance contains the streams LIFE:REL1, LIFE:REL1_DISCOUNTS, and LIFE:REL1_PROMOTION.

Sidebar

There is a sidebar on the left that includes the following links:

• Home displays a summary of:
  • The current user's recent activity and streams.
  • The number of reviews the current user owns.
  • The number of reviews that require attention by the current user.
• Suites displays a list of all the current suites. Click a suite to display its child products and a product to display its child streams.
• Administration enables you to configure Pulse (requires administrator privileges).

The links displayed below the divider change based on your current location in the Pulse hierarchy.

Activity

When you select a suite, product, or stream its latest activity is displayed in the main window, including information about:

• New reviews that were created.
• New changesets that were delivered to streams.
• Changes to reviews' states.
• Comments on reviews.
• Expert chains results.

Experts

Experts are tools that perform actions on streams, such as examining health and quality, and report back measurements and findings. Experts are triggered when a delivery is made to a stream and a changeset is created. You can inspect an expert's results in an activity feed or on a review page. You can configure experts to run in a sequence, called an expert chain, and create multiple independent expert chains to run on a stream. For example, the first chain runs on every delivery and performs brief static analysis. A second chain is scheduled to run at midnight every day and performs more thorough analysis and deployment.

The following experts are included with Pulse:

• Changeset Summary Expert: counts the number of files added, deleted, and modified in each changeset.
• Checkstyle Expert: enforces coding standards.
• Jenkins Expert: a continuous integration server that you can use with Pulse to execute, and report on, builds of changesets as they are delivered.
• Kiuwan Expert: measures, analyzes, and verifies the quality of code.
• PMD Expert: analyzes source code and finds programming bugs.
• SDA Deployment Expert: imports and deploys a component using Serena Deployment Automation.
• SDA Generic Process Expert: runs a global process in Serena Deployment Automation.
• SonarQube Expert: inspects the quality of code.
• Dependency Vulnerabilities Expert: finds third party dependencies in code that may have known security vulnerabilities.

Reports

Report views display measurements generated by review and expert activity in your stream as charts or tables. Reports are scoped to the suite, product, or stream from where you run them.

Notifications

You can select the review notifications to which you are subscribed. Notifications are sent when an event takes place on a review, for example:

• A review that you own changes state.
• You become the owner of a review, or are added as a reviewer.
• A review that you own is voted on.
• A review that you own is commented on.

The list of review notifications is managed by your Pulse administrator.

Watch a Review

You can optionally watch a review. When changes are made to the review you are notified by email.

Search

To refine a search you can now select multiple filters.

Review Page

Review pages include the following improvements:

• The Contents section, and the sidebar, display all the files in the review. Click a file to jump to its content.
• The Contents section displays the total number of files that were added, modified, deleted, and renamed.
• A new Experts section displays the results of expert runs.

Stream and Project Selection Enhancements

In the desktop client, and the Visual Studio and Windows Explorer integrations, it is now easier to find and select streams and projects. You can:

• Start typing the ID of a stream (or project). Streams that contain any characters in the string are displayed. For example, to find ’QLARIUS:VS_BRANCHA’ type ’vs’.
• Select a stream (or project) from a list. Favorite streams and recently used streams are displayed at the top of the list.

You can add streams and projects to, and remove them from, your Favorites list. Recently used streams and projects are automatically added to your Recents list.

Security Enhancements

The following security enhancements have been introduced:

• Administrators can disable Java Applets in the web client. All version management operations for local work areas will be disabled, including deliver, update, check in, and check-out. Operations on remote work areas will work normally, except for update from stream and merge.
• Dimensions CM now performs SSL certificate validation. For details see Secure Sockets Layer Support on Dimensions CM in the Dimensions CM System Administration Guide.

Desktop Client User Interface Improvements

The desktop client user interface has had a major refresh including:

• A cleaner, more streamlined user interface.
• New icons for most objects.

New dmcli Commands

The following commands have been added to dmcli, the Dimensions CM command-line interface:

• HIDE - Hide Unused Streams and Projects
• SHOW - Show Hidden Streams and Projects
• SHELVE - Shelve Changes to a Personal Stream
• SF - Set Favorites

For details see the Dimensions CM Command-Line Reference.

Updates to dmcli Commands

The following dmcli commands have been updated:

• MERGE
• RDEL
• REXEC
• RLIST
• RSTAT
• LWS
• BLD
• BLDB

For details see the Dimensions CM Command-Line Reference.

Serena Deployment Automation

You can optionally install Serena Deployment Automation (SDA) with Dimensions CM. SDA automates software deployment, which is the process of moving software through various pre-production stages to final production. Typically, each stage represents a step of higher criticality, such as quality assurance to production. SDA helps you meet the deployment challenge by providing tools that improve deployment speeds while simultaneously improving their reliability. For more details see the Serena documentation center.

Dimensions CM Bridge Enhancements

The following enhancements have been made to Dimensions CM Bridge:

• Improved performance when updating and delivering items, and displaying repository content in a web browser.
• Git users can connect to a Dimensions CM repository instead of Subversion. When you clone a Dimensions stream to a local Git repository it contains a link to your remote CM repository and you can run any Git svn command if your current directory is a local Git repository.

For details see the Dimensions CM Bridge Getting Started Guide.

SVN Migration with Changesets

By default Dimensions CM changesets are created from Subversion revisions. The changesets are for historical use only and cannot be used with stream versions. For example, you cannot fetch a stream version that is older than the date of a migration. Files deleted from Subversion are included in changeset history but are not migrated as Dimensions CM items. For details see the Migrating to Dimensions CM guide.

Agent Auto Update

Auto update is the process of managing the automatic update of Dimensions CM agents. Auto update has the following benefits for administrators:

• Centralized control over Dimensions CM software updates.
• Flexible upgrade process.
• Audit trail of updates across a network.

For details see Configuring and Using Auto Update in the Dimensions CM System Administration Guide.

IDE Performance Enhancements

The Visual Studio integration now gets items statuses and loads data into views more quickly.

RESTful API Web Services

Dimensions CM now supports RESTful API web services. For details see the Dimensions CM Developer's Reference.

Viewing Execution Logs

To aid the traceability of deployment areas you can view the results of REXEC, deployment, and build script executions by examining the log files that are preserved in CM. For details see Executing Operations on Remote Nodes in the Dimensions CM System Administration Guide.

New Features in Serena Dimensions CM 14.1.0.4

Release date: 7th April 2015

CM Bridge

IPv6 and Serena License Manager 2.2.0

Serena Pulse

Changesets

Versioned Repository Schema

Creating a New Stream or Project Based on a Previous Version

Lock-Free Delivery

Enhanced Merging across Streams

Annotations View

Personal Library Cache and Delta Transfers

Auto Update

New File Merge Tool

Enhanced Upload Rules

Tomcat and Java Runtime Environment

New dmcli Commands

Changes to dmcli Commands

Installing the Eclipse Integration from a Server

Dimensions CM Java API

CM Bridge

Dimensions CM Bridge is a connector between a Subversion enabled client and a CM server that enables:

• Your development tools to talk to a CM repository instead of Subversion.
• Development teams familiar with Subversion to continue using their existing IDEs and tools with the additional benefits of Dimensions CM.
• Dimensions CM to be used with IDEs that do not have a “native” integration with CM but do support Subversion.

For more details see the Dimensions CM Bridge Getting Started Guide.

IPv6 and Serena License Manager 2.2.0

Dimensions CM 14.1.0.4 adds support for Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) and Serena License Manager (SLM) 2.2.0.

SLM 2.2.0 adds support for Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). For more details see the SLM readme.

IMPORTANT!

• If you are using a previous version of SLM you must upgrade to version 2.2.0. For details see the Serena License Manager Installation Guide.
• IPv4 must be installed on the server. You may disable IPv4 support on the network adapters but do not remove its protocol stack.

Serena Pulse

Serena Pulse is a new tool for developers that provides you with an intuitive visualization of changes in your streams and projects.

Reviews

Reviews enables your development team to collaborate using a configurable workflow. Delivery filters control which changesets automatically create reviews. You can use reviews to:

• Ensure that only the highest quality changes make it into your builds.
• Promote team work and development best practices.
• Provide visibility into key information about the health of your changes, such as build and unit test results.
• Add comments to reviews and collaborate with team members.
• Vote to approve or reject reviews.

The review list displays all the reviews that match the selected filter.

Review Page

A review page displays information about a specific change, including:

• The review owner, the changeset (stream version) that created the review, the parent stream or project, and any related Dimensions CM requests.
• A summary of changes to the review such as: the health of builds, comments that have been added, changes to the review's state, and votes to approve or reject.
• The review owner and the lead and optional reviewers.
• The associated changesets. Multiple changesets are associated with a review if a user makes several deliveries to a stream or project using the same request.
• A list of all the item revisions associated with the selected changesets.
• The contents of all the item revisions.

You can also:

• Add comments to an item revision and collaborate with your team members.
• Vote to approve or reject a review.

Viewing Changesets

There are multiple ways that you can view the information in changesets:

• Changeset Graph: visualizes your changesets and streams of development.
• History view: displays the history of changes in chronological order.
• Contributors view: displays all the developers who have made deliveries to the repository.
• Punch Card view: displays the busiest periods for deliveries to the repository by day of the week and time.

The Changeset Graph

The changeset graph visualizes streams and their change history across multiple releases. This provides development teams and release managers with a visual understanding of what changes are being worked on, where, and why. Tight coupling between changesets and continuous integration tools, such as Jenkins, provides feedback on the health of changes and real time indication of release readiness based on build and test status.

You can use a changeset graph to:

• Visualize all your streams and projects in one place including branches and merges. Each circle or group represents a changeset or a group of changesets.
• Review the health and readiness of your changesets and decide if they ready to be merged or released.
• Watch in real time as streams are branched, merged, and moved through the build and unit test lifecycle.

Changesets

A changeset is a logical grouping of changes that is created automatically every time that you deliver changes to a stream or project in a repository. Each changeset creates a new version of a stream or project. Changesets give insight into the development activity in your streams and enable you to easily identify changes. They also reduce the complexity of parallel development by making it easier to manage sets of changes. Changesets enables you to view all of the changes that have been made to a stream or project since it was created.

The Changesets dialog box (or view) is available in all clients and integrations. Depending on the client or integration you can:

• Browse and open requests associated with a changeset.
• Merge from a stream version.
• Create a new stream or project from a stream or project version.
• Compare changeset items.
• Display the history of changeset items.
• Display the pedigree of changeset items.
• Browse and open changeset items.
• Open peer reviews and build results in Serena Pulse.

Versioned Repository Schema

To enables new features, such as changesets and enhanced merging, Dimensions CM 14.1 uses a Versioned Repository Schema (VRS). After upgrading to Dimensions CM 14.1 from an earlier version you must upgrade the data in your RDBMS to use VRS. The upgrade is required to populate the VRS for the existing streams, projects, and baselines.

To populate the VRS for a stream or project the upgrade replays the history of changes to that stream starting from its creation, against the VRS, one changeset at a time. This re-creates the version history of a stream in the new schema.

For details about upgrading your data see the installation guide for your platform.

Creating a New Stream or Project Based on a Previous Version

When creating a new stream or project you can base it on a previous version of an existing stream (or project). The new stream inherits all the item revisions from the parent stream (or project), not just the tip revisions. This new functionality is available in the desktop client, the Windows and Visual Studio integrations, and the command-line client (dmcli).

Lock-Free Delivery

Lock-free delivery enables multiple developers to deliver different changes to the same folder concurrently.

Enhanced Merging across Streams

Prior to Dimensions CM 14.1 you could only merge streams when performing an update operation. In 14.1 the update and merge operations have been separated and there is a new Merge wizard in all the clients and integrations, and a new MERGE command. Merging streams and changes is now quicker and it is easier to accurately identify the source of changes, especially when refactoring has occurred. The Update wizard has also been redesigned and is similar to the new Merge wizard.

You can merge:

• Changes across streams or their folders.
• Changes from a baseline into a target stream.
• Changes from requests owned by another stream into a target stream.

Merge is similar to Update and uses a work area to apply changes and process conflicts. This enables you to safely merge, build, and test before delivering the merge results to a target stream in a repository. When you merge two objects, for example a stream with another stream, or a stream with a baseline, Dimensions CM looks for a common ancestor. This is a point in time where the streams or work areas diverged. This is typically referred to as a three-way merge. The merging process uses changesets to find the common ancestor.

Annotations View

The Annotations view annotates the lines of code in your source files. Annotations make it easier to find when a change was introduced. You can also see who made a change and why. Each annotation displays the item revision and the name of the user who delivered the change. You can hover over an annotation to view additional information about an item revision such as:

• The date and time of the delivery.
• Its related change requests.
• Any comments added by the user.

The Annotations view is available in all the clients and integrations. You can also use the ANNOTATE command in the dmcli command-line client to list file annotations.

Personal Library Cache and Delta Transfers

Personal library cache directory (PLCD), and delta compression on file transfers, provide significant performance improvements for geographically distributed development teams. PLCD enables faster access to repository files for distributed teams by removing network transfers when the same revision has been previously fetched to a workstation. PLCD makes a local copy in a cache directory of items downloaded from, and uploaded to, Dimensions CM. This mechanism speeds up transfers when fetching the same revision more than once, for example, fetching a baseline or restoring item revisions.

Delta transfers reduce network traffic by only transferring the sections of files that have been modified between revisions. For this optimization to be applied the original revision of the file must have been fetched to, or saved from, the local workstation. The greatest reduction in transfer times is for files that have modifications in only a few sections and large continuous sections of unchanged content. Files that have widely dispersed multiple changes between revisions have a smaller improvement in transfer times.

Auto Update

Auto update is the process of managing the automatic update of Dimensions CM clients and agents. Auto update has the following benefits for administrators:

• Centralized control over Dimensions CM software updates.
• Semi-automated roll-out of client software upgrades (Windows only).
• Fully automated roll-out of agent software upgrades (except Dimensions for z/OS).
• Flexible upgrade process.
• Audit trail of updates across a network.
• Scheduling of updates.

During the silent installation of clients and agents you can add values that point to a server hosting installation packages for auto update. For details see Configuring and Using Auto Update in the Dimensions CM System Administration Guide.

New File Merge Tool

The default file merge tool in Dimensions CM on Windows is Araxis Merge, a two and three-way file comparison (diff) and merging tool. You can obtain help in Araxis Merge at any time by using the commands in the Help menu or by pressing the F1 key. Some windows also contain a Help button. You can change the default file merge tool to the Serena Merge Tool or any third party application. For details see Configuring the Default Merge Tools in the Dimensions CM System Administration Guide.

Enhanced Upload Rules

Upload rules now support multiple wildcards and Ant style pattern matches in filenames and paths. Ant patterns help to simplify the organization of separate design part rules. For example, you can define design part rules by a directory pattern match while maintaining the existing item type to file extension mapping. The patterns are similar to those used in DOS and UNIX:

• '*' matches zero or more characters.
• '**' matches zero or more directories.
• '?' matches one character.

For more details see Upload Rules in the Dimensions CM Process Configuration Guide.

Tomcat and Java Runtime Environment

Dimensions CM 14.1 installs the version 7.0 of Tomcat and the Java Runtime Environment (JRE).

New dmcli Commands

The following new commands have been added to dmcli, the Dimensions CM command-line client:

• ANNOTATE: Displays the contents of a file where each line is annotated with information about the person who last modified it and when.
• AUPG: Starts an upgrade process on a Dimensions CM agent system.
• CIP: Creates a baseline containing files to be used to upgrade a Dimensions CM client or agent.
• DLCA: Updates a single library cache area with a list of one or more Dimensions CM items.
• LOG: Lists the changeset history of your streams and projects.
• LUPG: Lists the upgrade history stored in a database.
• MERGE: (not available for projects). Merges changes from a stream, change request, or baseline into a work area owned by another stream using a three-way merge process based on the common ancestor stream version. The command compares the target work area with the stream or baseline and automatically applies any non-conflicting content and refactoring changes.

For details see the Dimensions CM 14.1 Command-Line Reference.

Changes to dmcli Commands

The following commands have changed:

• UPLOAD: this command is now atomic: if a failure occurs during the execution of the command, any changes that have been applied in the current operation are discarded and the command is terminated.
• UPDATE: by default, content deleted from a work area is treated as a local change that is pending for delivery. Specify /OVERWRITE to overwrite this content with item revisions from the associated stream.
• UPDATE: cannot be used to merge changes to streams, use the new MERGE command instead.
• AIWS: If you do not specify /WS_FILENAME a warning is displayed if the item paths across the source and target projects do not match. If you specify /WS_FILENAME the specified path is used as the new path of the item in the target project. Therefore the item is effectively renamed if its existing path differs from the /WS_FILENAME value.
• DOWNLOAD and UPLOAD: /SCRIPTFILE qualifier is deprecated.
• CBL: Design baselines do not include checked-out revisions.
• CS: When you use the Create Stream command to create a new stream based on a parent, all revisions of the parent stream are included even if you do not specify the /ALL qualifier. Create a tip baseline and then create a new stream based on this tip baseline if you want do not want to include older item revisions in your new stream.

Installing the Eclipse Integration from a Server

You can install, and upgrade, the Eclipse integration for Dimensions CM from an update site hosted by the Dimensions CM server. This site supports both Tomcat and Websphere. You can use the same method to install Appcelerator Titanium Studio into Eclipse. For details see the installation guide for your platform.

Dimensions CM Java API

The Java API is built with Java 6. Serena recommends that programs using the Dimensions CM Java API are rebuilt using Java 6 or later.

12.2.2| 12.2.1 | 12.2 | 12.1.1 | 12.1

New Features in Serena Dimensions CM 12.2.2

Release date: 01 February 2013

IDE Baseline Creation

You can now create baselines from the Eclipse and Visual Studio integrations. You can create the following types of baseline from any project or stream in the repositories you are connected to:

• A release baseline using a baseline template and scoped by a design part
• A tip baseline
• A revised baseline
• For details, see the Dimensions for Visual Studio User’s Guide and the Dimensions for Eclipse User’s Guide

Product-Specific IDE Upload Rules

It is now possible to define product-specific upload rules for an IDE. You can create default upload rules for an IDE for a specific product based on a selected product’s upload rules.

Enhanced performance for Tip and Revised Baseline Creation

Performance has been enhanced for the creation of tip and revised baselines involving large numbers of items.

Common Tomcat Installation

The installer now detects whether the common tomcat is already installed and re-use it instead of installing another one. For example, if Dimensions RM or Development Manager is already installed, then the installer for Dimensions CM is able to determine this and use the same instance of Serena Common Tomcat for Dimensions CM.

SSO Login for Build/Admin

SSO login is now enabled for Dimensions CM Build Administration. This enables users to view build logs from Serena Development Manager.

Updates to cm_typical Process Model for Serena Release Manager

The baseline lifecycle and the Global Stage Lifecycle in the cm_typical process model have been updated to match the default processes used in Serena Release Manager.

Support for Microsoft Windows 8 and IE 10

This release of Dimensions CM provides support for Windows 8 and Microsoft IE 10 for client platforms.

Support for SQL Server 2012

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 is now supported.

IDE Support

The integration for Dimensions CM is now supported for Eclipse 3.8 and 4.2, including support for running these versions of Eclipse on new platforms: Mac OS X 10.7 and Windows 8.

CAC authentication support is now available on 64-bit Windows for 64-bit Eclipse.

Visual Studio 2012 is now supported.

User Documentation Enhancements

The following Dimensions CM books have been renamed:

• The Process Modeling Guide is now the Process Configuration Guide
• The Administrator's Guide is now the System Administration Guide
• The Integrated Products Guide is now the IDE User’s Guide

The following web services and ALF events guides:

• Web Services Reference
• ALF Events Reference
• Web Services and ALF Events API Developer’s Guide

have been merged into the Developer’s Reference.

The ChangeMan DS Migration Guide has been merged into Migrating to Dimensions CM.

The information in the Developer’s Reference relating to build templates has been completely rewritten. There are now three new chapters:

• Introduction to Build Templates
• Build Templates for Distributed Platforms
• Build Templates for MVS Platforms

New Features in Dimensions 12.2.1

Release date: 20 July 2012

Enhancements to Windows Explorer Integration

The following enhancements have been made:

• You can now action a request from the Windows Explorer.
• You can select a folder that is not currently under Dimensions control and perform a get operation. This fetches the selected files and also associates that folder as the Dimensions root folder for the project or stream.
• Network folder support is not enabled by default for performance reasons. This is now an option that can be selected. Performance when using network folders has also been enhanced.
• If you do not have a default comment for checking in files, and a comment is required for the item type, you are now prompted and allowed to enter one.

For details, see the User’s Guide.

Desktop Client Request Refactoring View Enhancements

The following enhancements have been made to the Changes tab on the secondary window for a request:

• There is now a button that allows you to expand or collapse entries for multiple revisions of the same item.
• There is a button that enables you to view changes made with the request for projects / streams other than the current default project / stream. An extra column is displayed showing the name of the project or stream.
• You can view the In-Response-To request for an item by selecting it and opening the request in New Window

Work Area Compatibility with Visual Studio and Eclipse Integrations

• The Eclipse and Visual Studio integrations can now share work areas with the other Dimensions CM clients provided that they are not relative areas.
• Upload Rules specifying the item types , item formats and owning design part for IDE projects will be used by the other Dimensions CM clients when delivering content within the scope of the IDE project’s location in the Dimensions project/stream.

Parallel Builds Jobs Submitted through the Deployment Server Queue

Build jobs can be now be submitted in parallel through the deployment server queue. This improves the throughput of build jobs in a highly stressed system. Build jobs take longer to run than deployment jobs therefore running multiple build jobs at the same time greatly increases the throughput of the deployment server queue. For details, see the Dimensions CM Build Tools User's Guide.

Build Ordering

The default behavior of build ordering has changed. Build are now more efficient and builds that include steps that fail are able to proceed much further. Build steps can now optionally have major and minor orders. A major order is the number assigned to a group of build steps. Minor orders group the build steps in a major order.

PCMS_EVENT_DELIVER Event

The PCMS_EVENT_DELIVER event now sends a list of operations to be performed before the actual DELIVER occurs.

New OnDelivery ALF Event

A New ALF Event (OnDelivery) has been added to the Project ALF Events. For details, see the ALF Events Reference.

New Features in Dimensions 12.2

Release date: 31 October 2011

Stream Metadata Performance

Changes have been made to the way metadata is formatted, leading to improved performance. Metadata is now stored in binary format. There is just one metadata file per folder for each type of controlled object (e.g. file, folder, work area configuration).

12.2 Clients will still be able to work with metadata created in the pre-12.2 format. Existing work areas will continue to use the pre-12.2 format but without the improvement in performance.The recommended approach for upgrading is to recreate your work areas where possible. There is however, a utility you can use to convert your work areas, see Metadata Update Utility below. When a new work area is populated from a 12.2 client, the metadata will be in the new format. Older clients will not be compatible with the 12.2 metadata.

Accessing a remote area served by a 12.2 agent or server that has the new format metada from pre-12.2 clients using Deliver, Update, or Synchronize is not supported.

Metadata Update Utility

A command-line utility, dmmeta, is provided that enables you to update existing metadata to the new Dimensions CM 12.2 format. You can also use this to view and change values in the new binary format metadata files. Serena recommends that you do not change values in the new binary format metadata files unless expressly directed to do so by a Serena Support representative. For details, see the Command-Line Reference.

Miscellaneous Stream Enhancements

There have also been the following enhancements to the use of streams:

• Dimensions CM now allows multiple users to perform non-overlapping deliveries to a stream at the same time. For instance, if user john delivers into a top-level folder "common_tools/" and user peter delivers into a top-level folder "application/", then these deliveries will execute concurrently.
• There have been performance improvements when delivering to a stream or project against a request.

Refactoring History View in Desktop Client

There is a new tab available in the right-hand pane of the desktop client that enables you to view the history of refactoring changes related to a request. When a request is selected in the catalog, the new Changes tab displays a list of related changes made against that request.

Windows Explorer Integration

The following new features are provided for the Windows Explorer integration:

• There is a request selection wizard available when choosing a default working request for a work area. You can select requests from your inbox or use various filtering criteria to find a request.
• You can now select a library cache area for your work area.
• File operations can now be performed for multiple selections of items and folders and are recursive for nested folders.

Synchronize Wizard Enhancements

• You can now select an item type for newly created items when synchronizing or delivering changes.
• You can display the Item History dialog for an item from within the Synchronize wizard.

For details, see the User’s Guide.

Item Header Substitution

The following enhancements have been provided for item header substitution:

• Library cache areas are now also supported for item transfers with expansion of header substitution variables.
• There is extended support for expansion of header substitution variables in the Visual Studio and Eclipse integrations, and the Windows Explorer plug-in.
• A new reversible header expansion syntax is available to allow expanded files to be edited and then delivered back into Dimensions, without losing the original file structure. This allows workflows which are more compatible with the way VM works. For further details, see Appendix B of the User's Guide.
• Behaviour of the /EXPAND qualifier on server commands has been optimised to only re-fetch and expand an existing item when the repository revision is more recent. To force a fetch and re-expand, a /REEXPAND qualifier has been added to these commands. For details, see the Command-Line Reference.

Maven Integration

Dimensions CM now provides SCM integration for Apache Maven, a tool that provides build and dependency management. The 12.2 release will include support for, among others, the following SCM providers:

• changelog
• checkin
• checkout
• status
• update

For details, see the Build Tools User’s Guide.

Support for Embedded Integrations

• Matlab and Rhapsody SCC integrations are supported for version management with Projects (but not streams). Matlab 64-bit SCC is not supported.
• The recommended interface for Matlab users is the Windows Explorer integration.
• The Rhapsody Eclipse-based client is certified using the Eclipse plug-in for this release, and this is the recommended Dimensions CM integration for Rhapsody.

Visual Studio Enhancements

• There has been an enhancement to the performance of the Visual Studio integration when launching the synchronization process.
• You can now associate a library cache area with a work area from the Visual Studio integration.

Miscellaneous Client Enhancements

• In the web client there is now pagination of items in the Update and Deliver wizards for streams. This improves usability and performance when delivering or updating large numbers of items.
• The merge tool now includes a Find dialog.

For details, see the User’s Guide.

Deyployment Script Enhancement

For MVS, the previous behaviour for deployment scripts was fire-and-forget. The new default behaviour is to wait for the script to connect back to Dimensions CM and mark the script as successful or unsuccessful.

Web Services and ALF Events

• The following web services have been added:
  • UpdateRequestDescription
  • GetRequestDescription
• You can now prime requests via Web Services.
• There is now a Delegate Request ALF Event.

Miscellaneous Enhancements

• Installing the desktop client is now optional for a Windows client install.
• Multi-value attributes are now supported in e-mail notifications.

New Features in Dimensions 12.1.1

Release date: 07 July 2011

Library Cache Areas for Deployment

You can now use library cache areas in order to improve deployment performance in cases where deployment areas are geographically remote from the main Dimensions server. You assign a library cache area to a deployment area by using the dmcli command UA (Update Area) or CA (Create Area) and supplying the /LIBRARY_CACHE_AREA=<area_id> qualifier.

The following command will create a new UAT deployment area and associate it with the ST-LC-1 library cache area:

CA UAT1 /net=st3859 /dir=c:\deploy\uat1 /user=dmsys /pass=<password> /type=deployment /stage=uat /library_cache_area=st-lc-1

The following command will associate an existing deployment area with a library cache area:

UA UAT2 /library_cache_area=st-lc-1

New Features in Dimensions 12.1

Release date: 28 February 2011

New Deployment Functionality

This release includes major enhancements to deployment:

• You can deploy and roll back independently using the Deploy and Rolback commands.
• Promote, demote, deploy, and rollback can be used with multiple items or items related to requests or baselines.
• If deploy by default is enabled for deployment areas, when you promote or demote to a stage you can automatically deploy files to the deployment areas associated with that stage.
• Deployment areas have controlled versioning. Deployments can be rolled back so that the deployed files are removed and the previous versions restored to the area.
• You can schedule deployment to occur at a future time.
• Deployment tasks run asynchronously from the clients for improved performance but synchronously against the same area for improved area integrity.

The web client provides full functionality for the new deployment features. There is a new Deployment tab where you can:

• View the history of deployment and build events.
• View items, requests, and baselines that have been promoted but not yet deployed.
• View deployment jobs that are running or have been scheduled.
• Filter the data on the Deployment tab, including by project/stream, area, stage, and date range.
• Cancel or reschedule scheduled events.

Note that the "Move on Deploy" Feature is no longer supported in this release.

The management of privileges has been expanded to support the new deployment functions, and these privileges can be specified by project/stream, stage, or area.

The new deployment server manages all deployment and build commands using deployment areas submitted to Dimensions.

There are new Web services and ALF events that support the new deploy and promote functionality.

A new book, the Dimensions CM Deployment Guide, describes the new deployment functionality. It also contains scenarios that describe the recommended methods for using Dimensions CM to manage deployment. You can follow these scenarios in the cm_typical sample database.

Deployment of Refactoring

Deployment of refactoring changes is available using requests (but not baselines or items).

Note that requests with refactoring should be deployed in order of any dependency. For instance, a request that creates a folder or item should be deployed to an area before a subsequent request to rename, move or remove that object. Sequences of renames, moves and removals of the same folder or item should be spread over more than one request.

Web Client Enhancements

In addition to the deployment features described above, the web client has the following additional features.

• Reports tab. Reporting features are now located on a new separate Reports tab. This tab lists existing reports, favourite reports, and public reports and enables you to manage and run reports in a single view.
• Multi-view reports. You can now display up to four reports simultaneously in a single view.
• Home View selection. You can choose the tab you want to be displayed when you launch the web client. If you choose the Reports tab you can choose a report or multi-view report to be displayed. The Home button always you to return to your Home View.

Desktop Client and Windows Explorer Integration

• You can launch the web client with the Deployment tab displayed in the desktop client when selecting stage, area, item, request, and baseline history.
• You can promote and demote items, requests, or baselines from the desktop client.
• The Item History dialog has been enhanced and now enables you to filter and sort the entries in the list and select which columns are displayed.
• The Synchronize Wizard now lists conflicts that occur when you deliver to a stream and allows you to ignore them.
• The Windows Explorer integration now supports Windows x64.

Installer Enhancements

Enhancements to the installation processes include:

• You can now select various details for the sample process model you wish to install, such as system login ID, and login credentials for the work and deployment area owners.
• You can provide the login details (server, database and connection string) for the desktop client and Windows Explorer Integration so that they will be displayed when you first see the Login dialog.

Run Build Wizard

The build dialog boxes in the web and desktop clients have been replaced by a wizard. The impacted target page has been modified to improve performance and provide additional options for viewing source/target relationships.

Browsing MVS Work and Deployment Areas

You can now browse the files in an MVS work or deployment area in the web and desktop clients.

Locking Items in a Stream

You can now lock items in a stream in the following additional clients:

• web client
• Windows Explorer integration
• Eclipse integration
• Visual Studio integration

Improvements to Streams when Merging

When you merge streams the following enhancements have been made:

• Deleted items and directories are not recreated.
• Items that have been renamed and/or moved do not revert to their old filenames and locations.
• Newly created items and directories that do not exist in the stream that you are updating from are not removed.

The stream merge enhancements mentioned above apply to the following clients:

• Synchronize Wizard (Desktop Client, Windows Explorer and Visual Studio Integration)
• Eclipse integration
• DMCLI command line
• DM command line

Serena-Supplied Runtime RDBMS 11gR2 Release

There is a new Serena-supplied runtime RDBMS 11gR2 release for the following platforms:

• Windows 32-bit
• AIX 64-bit

CAUTION! The Windows versions require approximately 11Gbytes of free space on the disk where they are installed.

Web Services and ALF Events

Web Services and ALF events now support the new deployment functionality.

Eclipse Integration

Enhancements to the Eclipse integration include:

• Ability to link to the new web client Deployment view
• Performance improvements
• Support for WindRiver

Visual Studio Integration

Enhancements to the Visual Studio integration include:

• Ability to link to the new web client Deployment view
• Support for VS 2010
• Performance improvements
• Enforced pessimistic locking in Dimensions projects
• Support for “out of project scope” files when opening from Source Control
• Uncontrolled solutions with controlled projects can now be added to source control

QC integration

Performance improvements (introduced in Dimensions CM 2009R2.02)

Dimensions RM/Dimensions CM integration

Performance improvements (introduced in Dimensions CM 2009R2.02)

2009 R2 | 2009 R1.01 | 2009 R1

New Features in in Dimensions CM 2009 R2

Release date: 14 December 2009

Smart Card (CAC) support via Single Sign On (SSO)

Support for authentication using Common Access Card (CAC) Smart Cards is included in this release. Authentication using Smart Cards is incorporated within the SSO (Single Sign On) feature that was introduced in 2009 R1, and is available for most Dimensions clients. When this feature is enabled, the user will be prompted to supply their PIN, and their login credentials from the certificate on the specified card will be supplied to the application.

Support for SSO and Smart Card authentication is now an optional module for the 2009 R2 server installer, which can automatically configure SSO and Smart Card authentication. The installer can also configure Dimensions CM 2009 R2 for use with an existing SSO server, such as that used by Serena Business Mashups.

Refer to the Supported Platforms section for details on which platforms support SSO.

For details of this feature and how to configure it, see the Administrator’s Guide and the installation guides.

Stream Enhancements

Locking of items in streams

It is now possible for a user to lock specific items in a stream. This prevents changes to those files from being delivered to the stream.

Items can be locked via the desktop client, or command-line (dmcli) and Developer (DM) command line clients.

For more details, see the User’s Guide.

Stream Support in the Web Client

Support for streams is now available in the Web client, see Web Client Enhancements below.

Desktop Client Enhancements

Updating a Work Area from a Request

You can now invoke the Synchronize Wizard to update a work area associated with a stream or project using a request. This means that you can review changes and conflicts using the Synchronize Wizard’s files and folders view. The updates are restricted to changes, including refactoring, related to the request, and optionally its child requests, and to items only belonging to the associated stream or project.

Updating a Work Area from a Baseline

You can now update a work area associated with a stream or project from a baseline using the Synchronize Wizard from the desktop client, Windows Explorer integration, and Visual Studio integration. You can select a folder or items within the baseline structure and have your work area updated with the corresponding changes. You also have the option of replacing files with earlier versions from the baseline.

Preservation of Views Between Sessions

The desktop client will now re-open with the same views that were open in your previous session. The projects and tabs that were opened in the main window are remembered between login sessions. You can, if you wish, unset this behavior using the Customize Views dialog.

Search Requests by Detailed and Action Description

You can now search for Requests by Detailed and Action description using wild cards and specific text strings.

Calendar Picker for Date Attributes

There is now a calendar picker for all user-defined date attributes.

Other Enhancements

Other enhancements include:

• Column widths, when resized, are preserved across login sessions
• You can specify more than one request in the Open Request dialog request filter
• There is an Apply button in the Edit Attributes dialogs
• There is an option to close the window when running a report in the Report Editor, allowing you to run the report in the background whilst remaining in the Report Editor

IDE Integrations

Creating Baselines from Visual Studio

You can now create and manage tip baselines directly from your Visual Studio development environment.

Update Work Areas from Requests in Visual Studio and Eclipse

You can now update your local working area with changes related to specific requests, without ever leaving your Visual Studio or Eclipse development environment.

Windows Explorer Integration Pedigree and Properties Displays

You can now display the Dimensions file pedigree and properties windows in Microsoft Windows Explorer. You can also compare a version of a selected file with other versions from within the Pedigree window.

For a web-based demonstration, see Using the Pedigree window from the Windows Explorer

Web Client Enhancements

Stream Management

You can now view and manage streams in the Web client. You can:

• Create a new stream. For a web-based demonstration, see Creating a stream using the web client
• View the contents of a stream in the My Current Project tab.
• View streams and update the properties of a stream on the new Streams tab.
• Update your work area from a stream. For a web-based demonstration, see Updating from a stream using the web client
• Deliver the changes in your work area to a stream. For a web-based demonstration, see Delivering to a stream using the web client

Visual and Usability Enhancements

Visual and usability enhancements to the Web client include:

• The styling, coloring, and icon designs have been enhanced
• You can now hide or display the navigation area by clicking on the splitter bar.

Changing Item File Permissions

There is now a command-line (dmcli) command – CHMOD - that allows you to change the permissions of an item file in the Dimensions repository. This changes the permissions the file will have when it is fetched to the work area. These permissions will be recreated when fetching files from the desktop client, and approximately recreated when using the Web client and Eclipse plug-in.

There is also a /PERMISSIONS qualifier to the LWSD (List Project Directories) command that will display the file permissions and other properties in a format similar to the UNIX ‘ls –l’ command.

Dimensions Build and Mainframe Enhancements

Copying Build Project Information

You can now copy build configurations and relationships using the relevant qualifiers with the following commands:

• DWS – Define New Project
• CS – Create Stream
• AIWS – Add Item to Project
• RAWS – Relate Area to Project/Stream.
• CBP – Copy Build Project

The CBP is a new command with this release.

By default, these commands do not copy build information unless the required qualifiers are specified, but you can change the default behavior by setting certain variables in the DM.CFG file on the server.

For further details, see the Command-Line Reference and the Administrator’s Guide.

BLD and BLDB Lists of Files and Targets

The BLD and BLDB commands now accept the specification of a file for containing long lists of source files or target files. The list of source files can be specified using either file names or item specifications.

For further details, see the Command-Line Reference.

Hudson Plug-In

A plug-in is now available for the Hudson continuous integration server from:

http://wiki.hudson-ci.org/display/HUDSON/Plugins#Plugins-Sourcecodemanagement

Additional Validation for Date Attributes

You can now define additional specification criteria for date attributes using the Administration Console. A date can be validated to be:

• Before or after another specified date attribute
• Within a specified date range
• Within a related number of days of a given date

For a web-based demonstration, see Defining date attribute validation using the Administration Console

New Version of SLM

SLM 2.1.4.1 is available for Windows Server 2008, AIX, HP-UX, and Redhat and SUSE Linux platforms. You should continue to use SLM 2.1.4 for the other platforms.

Oracle Instant Client

The Redhat and SUSE Linux releases are now native 64-bit. To be able to continue to use a 32-bit Serena Database Runtime or a 32-bit Oracle Enterprise 10g RDBMS, a 64-bit Oracle Instant Client will be installed by the Dimensions intaller should a 32-bit RDBMS be detected.

Performance Enhancements

The Developer (DM) client has had a number of performance enhancements against the STATUS, MV, ADD and DELETE commands such that now they work fully offline.

Performance in the desktop client has been enhanced when:

• Displaying privileges in the Show User Roles and Privileges dialog
• Comparing item revisions over a WAN
• Selecting impacted targets when building a request

Web Services

The following Web Services have been added:

• Create Scheduled Job
• List Projects and Streams

C/C++ DTK Enhancements

• The C/C++ based DTK has now been enhanced to support product-level security such that -when enabled - users without valid roles on products cannot access objects they have no rights to.
• The event mechanism has now been enhanced to support lock and unlock events on locking projects, streams and items.

Migration Enhancements

The migrations from PVCS Version Manager, Subversion, and CVS now allow the following:

• You can migrate projects into Dimensions streams as well as projects.
• You can migrate empty folders.

The Visual Studio migration provides the ability to select specific solutions for migration.

Integrations

Issue management integration is now supported with HP Quality Center 9.2 and 10.

Running the Agent or Server in Restricted Mode

You can now start a Dimensions agent or server in restricted mode on Windows and UNIX. This means that you can run the agent as a user other than the default user. The default users are:

• UNIX: root
• Windows: a user with local administrative rights

You can specify any user in restricted mode, but this user will most likely be the Dimensions system administrator (dmsys). Please see the Administrator's Guide and installation guides for more on restricted mode.

New Features in Dimensions CM 2009 R1.01

Release date: August 2009

Deliver Single Files at a time

You can now deliver a single file at a time to a stream using the desktop client or the Visual Studio integration.

Automatic Merging in Eclipse

You can now automatically merge changes to local files when synchronizing your work area using the Eclipse integration to Dimensions.

New Features in Dimensions CM 2009 R1

Release date: June 2009

New Parallel Development Features

Dimensions support for Parallel Development has been updated in this release to follow modern best practices in an intuitive way. New features and functions have been provided that offer an alternative environment to that provided in previous releases by Dimensions projects (which are still retained).

Streams

There is a new type of container for items, called a stream. Streams have been designed to be better suited to collaborative development using a "copy, modify, merge" process. Projects are still retained, and function as in previous releases, but are more appropriate to a "lock, modify, unlock" development process. You can configure your process model to allow users to work with: only streams, only projects, or both projects and streams.

Streams, and the features that are intended for working with them, are designed for carrying out small amounts of change and integrating them with the main body of code before starting on a new set of changes. They facilitate an iterative development process where the developers resolve any conflicts and build and test the application in their work areas before committing those changes to the repository.

Streams enforce a single line of descent. They do not contain parallel branches of the same items, and therefore it is easy to build working code from the tip revisions at any point in time. The following key features have been introduced:

• Update command: This updates your work area with the changes between the stream and the work area. If there are conflicts, you can resolve them during the Update process using the features provided by the Synchronize wizard or DM command line client
• Deliver command: This updates the stream in the repository with changes from the work area provided that there are no conflicts. If conflicts are present, then you are given the option to perform an Update to resolve those conflicts.
• Atomic Commit: The Deliver process is performed atomically, so that if any failure occurs, the whole delivery will be rolled back.

Content in a work area can originate from different streams and this information is recorded in the work area. The user can choose to deliver content originating from one or more streams into a target stream. There is also the concept of the parent stream from which a stream is created and into which it will be subsequently merged.

There is an option that you can set in the Administration Console that restricts the users of the database to either only view streams or projects as an alternative to working with both. For existing customers upgrading from a previous release of Dimensions, Streams are hidden and will need to be enabled via the Administration Console if required. There is also a new wizard that enables you to quickly create a new stream or project.

Streams are supported for both CM and Express in the desktop client, Windows Explorer plug-in, Eclipse and Visual Studio integrations and the Command-Line client. Streams have also been included into the sample process models.

The following features apply to Projects only and are not applicable to Streams

• Check out and check in
• Merge Project or Item
• Resolve Merge Conflicts
• Auto-resolve Merge Conflicts
• Use of the Project Merge tool (Project Compare is applicable to Streams)

For an overview, see the chapter "Using Streams" in the User's Guide.

Limitations on the use of streams

There are the following limitations in the use of streams:

• You cannot currently use streams when working with the web client.
• You cannot currently use Streams when working with an SCC integration
• Streams cannot be used with MVS data areas, work areas, or deployment areas.

Automatic File Conflict Resolution

Dimensions CM now has the ability to automatically resolve non-conflicting file content in the Update processes for streams.

Developer Command-Line Client

There is a new command-line client that is intended for working with streams. The syntax and commands available have been aimed at users familiar with the Subversion tool to provide a more user-friendly alternative to the existing dmcli client. A set of commands are provided to enable you to perform updates between your work area and the streams in the repository and for a number of other related tasks.

Some of the key functions you can perform are:

• Create and delete streams
• Update your work area from a stream and deliver changes in your work area to a stream.
• Display information from the repository, such as the contents of a stream, or a list of the streams or baselines in the database.
• Display differences between your work area and a stream, and update and resolve code conflicts.
• Add annotations (or comments) to files and review their history.

For details, see the Command-Line Reference.

IDE Integrations

Eclipse

The following features have been added:

• Integration with SBM (see IDM Integration below)
• Support for streams (see Streams above)
• A "Working List" feature, that allows you to maintain a list of requests that you are currently working with.

Visual Studio

There is a new integration for Visual Studio:

• Full Rich IDE functionality for Developers
• Integration with SBM (see IDM Integration below)
• Support for streams (see Streams above)
• A "Working List" feature, that allows you to maintain a list of requests that you are currently working with.
• Improved Usability and performance
• A new method of binding to improve parallel development support. A migration is needed for the new binding syntax.

All Projects in a Solution must now be in the same Dimensions project or stream.

Note that this new integration is only available for VS .Net 2005 and 2008. Only the older SCC-based integration is available for users of Visual Studio prior to 2005.

Also note that for existing customers to use this new integration they must migrate their projects using the VS Projects Migration Utility. This is included in the client installation. For details of how to use this tool, consult the Serena Dimensions 2009 R1 Visual Studio Projects Migration Guide.

Windows Explorer Integration

The Windows Explorer plug-in has been enhanced to support working with streams.

You can create a stream or project using the Create Project/Stream wizard when setting a folder as a work area.

There is a new automatic login facility that stores your login credentials so that you only need to log in to Dimensions once.

Terminology Changes

As a result of new functionality and usability changes, the following terms have been changed:

• Upload becomes Deliver
• Download becomes Update
• Update Item becomes Revise Item.
• Working Location becomes Work Area
• Working Request becomes Default Request
• Working Branch becomes Default Branch
• Cross-Project Inbox becomes Global Inbox
• Cross-Project Catalog becomes Global Catalog
• Project Baseline becomes Tip Baseline

IDM Integration

There is an important new integration to Dimensions that enables requests or issues from a third-party IDM (Issue Defect Management) tool to be used to track Dimensions items. This is a direct integration based on web services, and no synchronizations need to be performed. You can use these IDM requests to relate to changes of items as an alternative to using internal Dimensions CM requests.

For this release the integration supports issues from SBM (Serena Business Mashups). Issues from SBM can be used as an alternative to Dimensions requests. This feature is supported in the desktop client, the Windows Explorer integration, the Eclipse and Visual Studio integrations and the command-line client. In the Eclipse and Visual Studio environments you can also directly access the SBM browser to view and update issues and run reports.

The result of this is that you can configure the following options in your process model at the base database level:

• Use SBM issues to track changes
• Use Dimensions requests to track changes
• Do not use any Request Management. This means that all request-related menu items and tabs will be hidden from the user in the GUI clients.

For details, see the Process Modeling User's Guide.

Visual Enhancements

Web Client

The following enhancements have been made to the look and feel of the web client:

• Toolbar icons have been completely revised to improve recognition.
• Changes have also been made to the icons in the navigation area.
• The overall presentation, color and layout have been improved.

These changes will be extended to other Dimensions products in future releases.

Desktop Client

There have been improvements in the following areas:

• The overall appearance of the main window and Login page have been enhanced
• The pedigree display has new icons and toolbar buttons.
• The small toolbar in the grid displays has been redesigned.

Synchronize Wizard

• This tool has been enhanced to support working with streams and the new IDM integration
• The first page has been redesigned so that all the options are now on one page.
• You have the option of not displaying the details pages.
• There is new set of toolbar buttons on the file and folder differences page.
• The options displayed at the bottom of the file and folder differences page are now organized in a tabbed arrangement for better usability.
• There are new options to automatically close the wizard on successful completion and to skip the summary page.

Other Visual Enhancements

• The file merge tool has a new set of toolbar buttons and icons that are consistent with those in the Synchronize wizard.
• There is now a new icon display in the project merge tool to inform you when processing is taking place.
• The Administration Console has also had some visual enhancements reflecting those in the web client.
• The Migration Console now has a new look and feel.

RM-CM Integration

The RM-CM integration has been enhanced to:

• Associate multiple Dimensions RM projects to a Dimensions CM product.
• Associate a Dimensions RM project to multiple Dimensions CM products.
• Provide enhanced traceability reports in RM which include CM Requests.

For more details, see the Dimensions CM User's Guide, and the Dimensions CM-Dimensions RM ALM Integration Guide.

Migrations

Subversion Migration

You can now use the extended migration tools in Dimensions CM to migrate Subversion directories and objects into Dimensions. The Migration Console is a graphical front end that enables you to move data from the supported Subversion sources into Dimensions products, allowing you to define how the data is mapped into Dimensions.

The Migration Console includes the following features:

• You can migrate all or part of a Subversion repository into a Dimensions CM project hierarchy. Note: The ability to migrate Subversion repositories directly to streams will be available in an imminent patch release. You can, however, migrate content to projects and create streams from a baseline taken from those projects. For details of how to do this, see the User's guide.
• Migration preserves your Subversion repository structure.
• You can migrate your Subversion trunk, branches, and tags to separate projects.
• You can also optionally migrate tags to Dimensions baselines or attributes.

Migration automatically creates process model data in Dimensions, including products, users, groups, privileges, item types, design parts, projects, baselines, and relationships. For details, see the Subversion Migration Guide.

VM Migration

There is an improved VM Migration console:

• You can migrate specifying date or number of revisions
• You can map promotion groups to stages
• You can select labels in the migration process
• You can map VM groups to Dimensions roles
• The performance has been improved.

SSO

Dimensions now supports Serena Single Sign On (SSO), which can optionally be enabled for managing user authentication at the time of login. Once a user creates a Dimensions session using the SSO login process, the session will have access to all SSO-enabled tools (such as Serena Business Mashups) that are called from within the session without being prompted for authentication.

This means, for example, that if you were writing a Mashup that uses both Dimensions CM and Serena Business Mashups, they will be able to call each-other's web services without specifying user names and passwords. This capability is also used in the IDM integration with Dimensions, so that users are able to directly access Serena IDM from within a Dimensions client UI.

Web Services and ALF Events

The following Web Services have been added:

• Unrelate Items from Parts
• Is the Dimensions system CM or Express?

The following ALF Events have been added:

• Build Project Started
• Build Project Completed
• Build Baseline Started
• Build Baseline Completed
• Create Request
• Update Request

Web Services and ALF Events can use either user id and password or SSO.

For details, see the Web Services API Developer's Guide.

Enhancements to Replicator

New Default Replicator Behavior

By default, when items are replicated, as part of baseline or project replication, all relationships between the item and change requests, design parts and other items are also replicated. In addition the related items and any required placeholder items are also replicated as objects. This does not apply to the related design parts or change requests. The relationships of any dumped placeholder items are not dumped.

For details, see the Administrator's Guide.

Dimensions Build and Mainframe Enhancements

The following features and enhancements have been added to Dimensions Build:

• Build item and build request now populate work areas with the selected source item revision. For deployment areas, a warning is issued for any items, or related items, that are not at the selected build stage. These enhancements ensure the proper item revision exists in the build area before the build is executed.
• Dimensions Build now supports streams. See "Streams" above.
• The Dimensions templating language has been enhanced to pass variables between steps. Additional templater keywords such as substring and pos have been added for better string processing.  Inline REXX is also now supported.
• SSL (Secure Socket Layer) is now supported on mainframe build nodes
• The following parameters have been added to web.xml:
  • search.path.match.areas.logical.nodes
    • Checks area logical nodes when search paths are being calculated.
    • Default: true
  • force.unordered.transition.execute.later
    • Forces unordered transitions to be executed after transitions with a higher build order.
    • Default: false
• A new template variable has been added to the Build Request Definition (BRD) file:
  • DMJOBID: displays the ID of a launched build job.
• Roles can now be assigned to build stages.
• The IMPORT and EXPORT commands have been extended to support the data settings in the Build Administration console.
• The XABC command (Unrelate Area from Build Configuration) now de-links an area from a build configuration.
• The RLIST command now has a WAIT/NOWAIT qualifier to control whether the command waits for job being queried to finish. The BLD/BLD command qualifiers BATCH/NOBATCH have also been renamed to WAIT/NOWAIT.
• A DESERV exit has been added for zOS Build which allows automatic discovery of link dependencies during a build.
• Build ordering within a configuration has been extended to support ordering final targets which have intermediate target dependencies. Previous releases only supported ordering final targets which had source item dependencies.

For details, see the Build Tools User's Guide.

Performance Enhancements

The performance of the project merge tool has been enhanced when processing large numbers of items. There is enhanced performance when creating, updating from, and delivering to projects when a large number of files is involved. All clients benefit from these improvements.

Installation and Upgrade Enhancements

This release is a full installation/upgrade. Enhancements are:

• Single CM and Express installations
• The Visual Studio integration is now installed as part of the client installation instead of requiring a separate installation.
• The need to use the Oracle SYSTEM user has been removed. The installer will prompt the user to enter the Oracle DBA user which no longer has to be the default SYSTEM.
• There is a new out-of-the-box process model
• SQL Server 2005 support has been added (There is no need for the manual procedure required in previous releases)
• Oracle 11g is now supported
• There is now a Dimensions agent for zLinux, the Linux operating system compiled to run on IBM mainframes.

Note that DB2 is no longer supported.

For details, see the Installation Guide for Windows or the Installation Guide for UNIX.

Sample Databases

During a new installation, you have the following options for the sample database:

• Typical, Stream Development: This provides sample data for teams preferring to use a "copy, modify, merge" methodology, typically used by Agile teams, where no lock is applied before code changes are made, and a single line of descent is enforced. This is the default process model.
• Typical, Non-Stream Development: This provides sample data for teams preferring a "lock, modify, unlock" methodology, where a lock is typically applied before code changes are made. It is intended for more traditional development or for migrating from other tools such as CVS or Version manager.
• Intermediate: This model is intended for users who require a high degree of control and process in a regulatory environment.
• Custom: This is a blank database intended for Serena consultants or SCM professionals who want to construct a tailored process model from scratch,

During an upgrade, the installer will transparently upgrade your pre-2009 process model for continued use.

10.1.3 | 10.1.2 | 10.1.1.1 | 10.1.1 | 10.1

New Features in Dimensions CM 10.1.3

Release date: January 2009

Client Enhancements

New Client Reporting Tool

There is new client reporting functionality that replaces and augments the query features available in the desktop client and web client in previous releases. These functions also supersede the Command Center reporting features as the main reporting tool in Dimensions CM.

• There are now graphical and tabular client reports as well as straightforward listing client reports. You can also dynamically drill down into the data underlying a column chart, pie chart or distribution table.
• As well as reports with a fixed query underlying them, you can also use contextual information from the client, such as the current user or current project, in a report's filtering criteria. You can also have a filtering criterion based on a parameter entered by the user at the time the report is run.
• Report results can be exported and the reports themselves can be made public so that other users can run them. Users can also add the public or private reports that they find most useful to a favorites list for easy access to them.
• Web client reports are supported for baselines, items, requests, and projects.
• Desktop client reports are also supported for the above, and additionally for customers, design parts, and secondary requests.

See the Serena Dimensions CM User's Guide for further details.

Support for Refactoring

There is now the following support for refactoring changes (rename, move, or removal of items or folders within a project):

• Refactoring changes can be tracked using a request. You can now record all refactoring changes against a request. The CLI commands AIWS, CWSD, DWSD, MWSD, RIWS, and SWF now accept a request list as an optional parameter. Dialog boxes in the web client and desktop client that involve refactoring operations now have an additional field for the user to supply request IDs to track these changes. 
• The requirement to specify a request when making refactoring changes can be enforced on a per project basis. 
• The CRB (Create Revised Baseline) command has been enhanced to support refactoring changes. This means that when requests that have been used to track refactoring changes are included in the list of update requests, those refactoring changes will be applied to the baseline.
• If you do not wish the CRB command to apply refactoring changes, you can set a parameter in the DM.CFG file, "DM_USE_OLD_CRB true", that will restore the pre 10.1.3 behavior. This means that the CRB command will only process item revisions related in response to the update requests, and not apply any refactoring changes tracked by those requests.
• The CRB, DPB, DPI, and DPR commands now have a report file parameter, enabling you to generate a report of the resulting updates without actually performing them.
• Refactoring changes can be deployed using:
• Requests
• Baselines.
Deployment of a request or baseline containing refactoring changes will result in the associated deployment areas being updated to be consistent with those changes.
• The project merge tool has been enhanced to show refactoring changes and identify any resulting conflicts. It is able to distinguish between real item changes and changes resulting from moves or changes in a parent folder.

You can also view the history of refactoring changes related to a request in a new tab in the Request History dialogs. This is available in the desktop client, web client, and Eclipse integration.

Enhancements to Synchronize Wizard

The summary page of the Synchronize wizard has been improved to make it easier to identify what actions will take place when the user clicks the Synchronize button. Actions that may not be what the user intended are noted with descriptions of their potential consequences.

Windows Vista Support

Windows Vista is supported on the following clients and IDEs:

• Desktop client
• Web client 
• Windows Explorer plug-in
• Synchronize wizard
• Visual Studio 2005
• Visual Studio 2008
• Eclipse 3.3
• RAD 7.0.0.5

Integrations

Support for Optimistic Locking in Visual Studio

The Visual Studio integration now has an optimistic checkout mode, where new item revisions are created when checking in rather than when checking out.

Other IDE Enhancements

There have been the following enhancements to the Dimensions CM IDE integrations:

• SCC and the Rich Eclipse integrations now obey CM Rules based on the state of the item.
• The Eclipse integration now displays structure change history for a request.
• The Eclipse integration now allows comment reuse.
• There is now a silent installer for the Eclipse integration.

CM/RM Integration

The following enhancements have been made to the Dimensions CM/RM integration:

• For a requirement in a Dimensions CM or RM baseline, a request is now related to a specific version of that requirement, and that version cannot be changed.

• To enable versioning of RM requirements in CM, the CM requirement specification has been enhanced from its 10.1.2 form

<puid>

to

<class_name>.<puid>;objId

for example:

Marketing_Requirement.MRTK_000020;4

The following commands have been enhanced to handle this new format:

CBL, CRB, RRCD, and XRCD

This has also resulted in changes to the desktop and web client to include additional requirement specification fields (principally in the Find dialog box).

Migrations

Starting with Dimensions CM 10.1.3, you can migrate your CVS repository to Dimensions CM. Using the Dimensions Migration console, you can map your directories, tags, and branches to Dimensions CM projects, baselines, and attributes. You can also optionally migrate your user information from CVS to Dimensions. For detailed information, please see the Serena Dimensions CM Migration Guide for CVS.

Performance and stability has been significantly improved for the Dimensions Migration Console.

Web Services API and ALF Events

With the Serena Dimensions CM Web services API (Application Programming Interface) and Dimensions CM ALF (Application Lifecycle Framework) events you can access Dimensions CM features for Use with Serena Business Mashups and Web applications. See the Web Services API Developer's Guide for further details. Detailed HTML documentation for the Dimensions CM ALF events is available for download, as a zip or tar file, from the Serena Support Web site from the same area as the rest of the Dimensions CM documentation.

The following Web services are available:

• Create Request
• Get Request Details
• Action Request
• Deploy Request
• Delegate Request
• Update Request
• Delegate Request for Replication
• Create Project
• Create Design Part.

Dimensions CM generates ALF events on the following actions:

• Item check out 
• Item undo check out 
• Item check in
• Create item
• Action Request.

Schedule Jobs

The schedule jobs functionality allows Dimensions CM users to schedule the execution of any CM command or set of commands. Moreover, this scheduling can be programmed to repeat, executing specified commands at preset intervals. Each schedule job can contain a list of commands.

The following CLI commands have been introduced to manage schedule jobs:

• CSJ - Create Schedule Job
• ESJ - Edit Schedule Job
• DSJ - Delete Schedule Job
• LSJ - List Schedule Jobs
• RCSJ - Relate Command to Schedule Job
• UCSJ - Unrelate Command from Schedule Job
• RSJ - Run Schedule Job
• CNSJ - Cancel Schedule Job
• VLSJ – View Log of Schedule Job

A new privilege, Manage Schedule Jobs, has been added to the Administration privileges to control the access to other user’s schedule jobs.

The scheduling functionality is highly configurable, and can be completely disabled should you wish to reduce server load. For further details, see the Serena Dimensions CM Administrator's Guide.

Scheduling of Deployment

The desktop and web clients provide the ability to schedule the deployment of items, requests, or baselines. The Deploy dialog boxes now include calendar controls to enable you to enter scheduling information to create a schedule job for the deployment. The commands for managing scheduled jobs can also be used to manage scheduled deployments.

Dimensions Build

The following Enhancements have been made in Dimensions Build:

• There have been performance improvements for build messaging between the build server and build agent.
• There have been improvements to prevent rebuilds occurring as items are promoted though the global stage lifecycle by keeping metadata about the previous build with the item as it is promoted.
• Client sessions are freed sooner after launching a build and the progress of pre-build tasks can be viewed in the standard build progress log. Asynchronous build launch capabilities are now provided in order to free up client sessions sooner. More of the pre-build processes (file transfer, clean script execution, pbem launch, etc) will now be executed after the build log URL has been generated and returned to the client session. 
• The build search path passed in the Build Request Definition (BRD) has been modified to only contain disk areas on the current build machine based on logical node.
• Support has been added to spread out load balancing across multiple build servers. The primary build server will optionally use a round-robin method for assigning a build server to handle the current build request. Please note that this is for the build server that handles messaging and interaction with the Dimensions Server. It does not apply to the build agent where a remote build is actually being executed.

Dimensions for z/OS

The following enhancements have been made to Dimensions for z/OS:

• You can execute clean-up scripts on the mainframe and view the output log from the build progress log.
• The footprint functionality has been extended in this release to provide the ability to footprint target items from a build. This is done by generating a tag on the load module that corresponds to a footprint document in the Dimensions repository. This new XML document contains dependency information for all of the items produced during the build job.
• The z/OS install logic has been changed to no longer use ADRDSSU. This removes some restrictions on how the naming of the target data sets is done so that installations where there is a common hlq is easier. Also, the use of the DMSYS user ID is no longer critical.
• Starting messages for the z/OS listener can now be issued on an exceptions-only basis. Also, there are more checks at start up to ensure that the environment is correct. These include checking that the region size is adequate and that the local time variable for Dimensions is set consistently with the system time.
• The z/OS listener now supports dumping to SYSMDUMP data sets, rather than CEEDUMPS. This improves the quality of dumps received by Serena Support, and reduces system overheads when dumping.

Dimensions Server Enhancements

The following server enhancements have been made:

• Login certificates issued by REXEC are now cleaned-up after use.
• Placeholder items can now be used in deployment areas. This is especially useful for capturing build item dependencies without physically collecting all files used in the build.
• Area filters now allow the filtering of items by design part.

Other Enhancements

• You can now delete project folders recursively in the desktop client and web client. You can also optionally remove the items in those folders from the project when deleting those folders.
• Custom tools in the desktop client can now be placed anywhere on the pulldown or popup menus by using the Menus/Toolbar tab of the Customize dialog box.
• The CLI interface has been extended to support reporting of merge conflicts via the LWC (List Project Conflicts) command.
• The CLI interface has been enhanced to accept the default request identifier of $DEFAULT for all request-based commands where the default request is the missing parameter. A default request refers to the user's preferred working request that they define.
• The following published views have been added:
• pcms_workset_structure_history: This view provides details on structure changes that have occurred against a Dimensions
  CM project.
• pcms_workset_branches - project version branch names
  This view lists the valid version branch names for a project. 
  

New Features in Dimensions CM 10.1.2

General Usability Enhancements

CM Rules Selectable by Project

There is now the option to choose how CM Rules take effect for a specific project. The default option for new projects of a particular type can be set in the Administration Console | Object Type Definitions | CM Rules section. This option can also be set for a specific project in the web client and desktop client. This means that you can choose one of the following options for a project:

• Items in the project will obey the CM rules that are defined for their specific item types.
• Items in the project will behave as if the CM rules for all the item types are enabled, regardless of whether they are specifically enabled in the Administration Console.
• Items in the project will behave as if the CM rules for all the item types are disabled, regardless of whether they are specifically enabled in the Administration Console.

Merging Items on Check In in the Desktop Client

Dimensions CM can now be configured to determine whether an item has any leaf revisions that need to be merged, and prompt the user with a number of options when they are checking in or updating an item in the desktop client and Dimensions CM has detected a conflict. The user will have a choice of actions to take, including to merge the work file with the version in the repository (invoking the file merge tool) or to check their file in as the tip revision. For full details, see the Dimensions CM User's Guide.

The option to perform this check can be set on the Dimensions CM server using the parameter (DM_DISABLE_BRANCH_CHECKINS) in the dm.cfg file. Setting this option will force all users to merge their changes with the tip revision in the repository. If this has not been set for the server, users of the desktop client can also choose to set this option in the Preferences dialog.

Default Design Part

A Dimensions CM user can now set a default design part for a project. This is used as the default owning design part for new items, requests, design parts, and baselines that are created by that user when working in the context of that project. This is available in:

• Desktop client
• Web client
• Synchronize Wizard
• Windows Explorer Integration

Enhancements to Desktop Client

The following enhancements have been made to the desktop client:

• Importing a Request into a Project: A new wizard is available in the desktop client enabling the user to select a Request (and optionally, its child requests) and import them into a Project. Dimensions CM will detect any item revisions that need to be merged and prompt the user for the action required.
• Resolving Merge Conflicts for a Project Folder: You can now perform Resolve Merge Conflicts for the items in a folder within a project and optionally, for all its subfolders. You can also perform Resolve Merge Conflicts for a Request.
• The Merge Item dialog box has been replaced with a more user-friendly wizard.
• You can now compare the contents of item files from the History dialog.
• An icon has been added to indicate where you can click the column heading to select all the rows in a grid display.
• You can open the Build Administration console from the Tools menu.
• The Find dialog for requests now enables you to specify projects to which the requests are related (or explicitly not related).
• There is a text field in the tool bar of grid displays that provides a quick way of filtering the list of objects to show only those that contain a specified string in a chosen column.
• The following dialog windows can now be resized:

• Resolve Merge Conflicts
• Merge Item Revisions
• Resolve Project Merge Conflicts
• Find Baseline, Customer, Design Part, Item and Release dialogs

See the Dimensions CM User's Guide for full details.

Enhancements to Synchronize Wizard

• It is now possible to select which items are synchronized according to change type: additions, deletions, modifications, or moves and renames. You can individually select which of these change types to include when performing an upload, download, or synchronization.
• Two toolbar buttons have been added to the item changes tree, and are selected by default:

• Hide Unchanged. When this is selected, files that are calculated to be ‘unchanged’ are not shown in the display.
• Hide Ignored. When this is selected, files and folders that have a resolution of ‘Ignored’ are not shown in the display.

• A secondary sub-progress bar has been added to the synchronizing page to display the progress of the Dimensions CM Download command when it is processing the bulk-fetching of items.
• There are now browse buttons to enable you to select the default design part and the working request.

See the Dimensions CM User's Guide for full details.

Printing Requests

There is now an option in the desktop client and web client to easily print a request including its expanded browse template.

Purging Library Cache Areas

The new PLCA command enables you to remove all files from a library cache area. For details, see the Command-Line Reference.

SCWS Command /USERS qualifier

The SCWS command now accepts a /USERS= qualifier. Using this option requires the privilege ADMIN_USERMAN

This new qualifier will accept both user and group ids. For example, to change the project settings for all users defined in the group "uk_users":

scws repx:repx4 /users=(uk_users) -

/dir="d:\temp\user4" /USER_BRANCH="4" -

/LIBRARY_CACHE_AREA=lca4 /PART=REPX:P4 -

/CHANGE_DOC_ID=REPX_TDR_4

This example will expand the group "uk_users" into its constituent user ids and iterate through those user ids updating the project settings for each in turn.

Note that if, at a later date, a new user is added to the group "uk_users", this new user will not inherit the project settings defined above. You would need to issue a specific SCWS command for the new user to update their project settings accordingly. For details, see the Command-Line Reference.

Enhancements to SET Command

There is a new option available for the SET command:

SET EOL WINDOWS|UNIX|DEFAULT|UNCHANGED|SHOW

Sets or displays the end-of-line handling mode for the current connection that will be used when getting text files over the current connection. 

For example:

• SET EOL WINDOWS ensures that gotten text files follow the Windows convention for line termination, i.e. each line is terminated with a CR/LF character pair, regardless of the client operating system. 
• SET EOL UNIX ensures that gotten text files follow the UNIX convention for line termination, i.e. each line is terminated with a single LF character, regardless of the client operating system. 
• SET EOL DEFAULT restores the default Dimensions end-of-line handling mode, i.e. text files gotten to a Windows node will have each line terminated with a CR/LF pair, while text files gotten to a UNIX node will have each line terminated with a single LF character.
• SET EOL UNCHANGED ensures that text files are gotten as-is from the item library without any end-of-line processing at all.
• SET EOL SHOW displays the current end-of-line handling mode.

Also, all Dimensions commands that result in files being gotten from item libraries (DOWNLOAD, ECDI, EI, FBI, FCDI, FI, FWI, REL) have been enhanced with a /EOL qualifier that takes one of the following values - WINDOWS, UNIX, DEFAULT, UNCHANGED - and allows the user to specify the end-of-line mode for the duration of the command only.

Note that these changes are not yet documented in the Command-Line Reference.

General Performance Improvements

WAN Performance Improvements

There have been a number of performance enhancements when using Dimensions CM over a WAN (Wide Area Network):

• Library Cache processing has been improved. Transfers to the library cache are now deferred to a memory cache for downloads and then performed in bulk when a threshold limit is reached or there are no more items to process.
• The performance of the Eclipse plugin when adding a project to Dimensions CM has been improved.
• The performance of the Eclipse plugin when displaying request attributes has been improved.
• Check in and check out performance has been improved.
• The Synchronize Wizard now uses the Upload and Download commands instead of multiple fetching and updating of files to improve performance.

Upload and Download Commands

The performance when using the Upload and Download commands has been improved by only querying the privileges Download Files from Project, Upload Files into Project and Download Files from Baseline once in a transaction.

Mainframe Performance Improvement

General mainframe performance has been improved through the addition of a metadata server and the caching of commonly used DD names. For further details, see the Dimensions for z/OS User’s and Administrator's Guide.

Authentication

OS Password Change in Dimensions CM Clients

In addition to Windows servers, users can now also change their password from Dimensions CM Clients for UNIX servers, provided that LDAP is enabled on the server.

Support for PAM

For Solaris servers, Dimensions CM now provides support for user authentication via a Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM):

• Connections from a client user interface where authentication is via PAM.
• Connections from a client user interface to a remote Dimensions CM node where authentication is via PAM.
• The creation and use of item libraries on a node where authentication is via PAM.

Authentication is via username and password only. This connection method is available from all supported Dimensions CM Clients to a supported Solaris server.

For further details, see the Administrator's Guide.

Credential Sets

Prior to this release, each Dimensions CM work or deployment area required a set of credentials (operating-system user-id and password) stored against it to be used for any operations performed against that area. When a password expired or changed with respect to a given user-id, the user had to search out the areas using that set of credentials and update them appropriately.

To facilitate managing credential sets, user-id and password information is now available as a separately managed object which can maintained centrally and assigned out as needed.

The following commands are available to manage credential sets:

• CCS – Create Credential Set
• DCS – Delete Credential Set
• UCS – Update Credential Set
• LCS – List Credential Sets for Current User

For further details, see the Administrator's Guide.

Using dmcli to connect to remote UNIX Dimensions CM servers without specifying a password

Dimensions CM now allows dmcli to use rhosts(5) authentication when connecting to a remote server. Because this method of authentication is considered too insecure for use in most environments, the feature must be explicitly enabled by specifying:

DM_ENABLE_RHOST_AUTHENTICATION Y

in the dm.cfg file on the server. Furthermore, the client environment must have the same variable defined, either as an environment variable or in the dm.cfg file. 

Please note the following constraints:

• Only UNIX servers are supported by this feature. 
• The user must have an operating system account on the Dimensions CM server. LDAP authentication is not supported by this mechanism. 
• The user name on the client system must match the user name on the Dimensions CM server. 
• The user must create a .rhosts file in their home directory on the server. This file must have mode 0600. 
• This feature cannot be used with named connections. Instead, the -host option to dmcli must be used to specify the Dimensions CM server.

Build and Make

Dimensions Build

The following features have been added to Dimensions Build version 10.1.2. For further details, see the Dimensions CM Build Tools User's Guide.

• The Dimensions CM client build panels now have options to automatically download and, optionally, apply the current system date/time to files when performing work area builds. 
• To simplify maintenance of mainframe build configurations, support for wildcards has been added.
• Source rules used in build configurations can now be scoped by item format/build type. This will provide a more granular selection of items with a common file extension and is especially useful in build configurations with wildcards. 
• The impacted targets/build targets list has been extended to include derived items discovered during the build. In the past, only targets in the build configuration were displayed.
• The output collection logic has been extended to relate build targets to the same design part of the corresponding source item in certain situations.
• For build configurations with wildcards, build steps can be ordered numerically to control what order build steps will get executed.
• Support for using SVA and MVA attributes as build options has been added.
• When you create a build area you can specify a credential set instead of a user ID. For details about credential sets see the Dimensions CM Administrators Guide. 
• The following build-related commands have been updated, or are new (for full detail see the Command-Line Reference): 

• BLD: new qualifiers: /TYPE, /SRC_CHANGE_DOC_IDS, /SRC_FILES, 
  /SRC_ITEMS, /[NO]CANCEL_TRAVERSE, /[NO]POPULATE, /[NO]TOUCH] 
• BLDB: new qualifier: /[NO]TOUCH 
• RABC (Relate Area to Build Configuration): new command that relates a build area to a build configuration. 
• ECFG: (Extract (Check Out) Build Configuration): new command that checks out a build configuration to the current user ID. 
• RCFG: (Return (Check In) Build Configuration): new command that checks-in all the changes to a build configuration. 
• IMPORT: new command that imports a new build configuration to Dimensions from an XML file. 
• EXPORT: new command that exports a build configuration to an XML file.

The following build options have been added to the Build Request, Build Item, Build Baseline, and Build Project panels:

• Download: If you have selected a work area as the target build area, you can transfer files to the area before the build is executed. 
• Apply system time/date: If you have selected the download option (see above) you can apply the system date/time to each file being transferred.

For further details, see the Dimensions for z/OS User's and Administrator's Guide.

Dimensions CM Make

Dimensions CM Make now provides the ability to generate an XML bill-of-materials suitable for use with Dimensions Builder. In this mode, the Dimensions CM database is not accessed directly by Make - Builder is responsible for populating the build area before the build and collecting build outputs once the build is complete.

To use this feature, specify the --xml-bom[=bom-file-name] option on the command line for dm_make, dm_nmake or adg. If no bom-file-name is specified, the default is bom.xml.

Integrations

New Third-Party Integrations 

The following integrations are now supported:

• Remedy 7
• RAD 7
• CruiseControl .Net

Selection Wizards Added to Visual Studio

There are Selection wizards now available in the Visual Studio integration to enable you to select objects in certain situations. These are available for Items, Requests, Baselines, and Design Parts. For details, see the Dimensions CM for Visual Studio User's Guide.

Historical Transitions Support in TeamTrack Integration

There is now support for historical transitions in the TeamTrack Dimensions integration. When multiple transitions have occurred between runs of the synchronization, the history of the intermediate transitions is applied in Dimensions CM.

Supported Platforms 

The Dimensions CM 10.1.2 Agent for Red Hat Linux ES 4.0 on 32-bit platforms can also be installed on following newly supported 64-bit platform (Agent installation only): 

• Red Hat Linux 4 AS (64-bit) on Intel (EMT 64)

Note: 

• This is not supported for use with 64-bit Intel Itanium chip architecture.
• As this is a patch release to Dimensions CM 10.1.1.x, you will need to install the Dimensions CM 10.1.1 Agent first.

Guide for Optimizing WAN Development

A new user guide is being added to the documentation set. It is called Dimensions CM Optimizing WAN Development and is available from the Serena Support Web site. This guide contains recommendations and suggestions for optimizing the use and performance of Dimensions CM over a Wide Area Network.

New Features in Dimensions CM 10.1.1.1

Enhancement to Synchronize Wizard

The Options fields for request and design part in the Synchronize Wizard now have a browse button to enable you to select the required object. Clicking the browse button displays a selection wizard. The first page enables you to enter selection criteria for the request or design part. The second page displays the matching list, from which you can select a request or design part with which to populate the field.

Requirement Titles now Displayed in Desktop and Web Client

The Dimension CM desktop and web clients now display the "Title" attribute for Dimensions RM Requirements.

Note: If using Dimensions RM requirements, all Dimensions Clients and Servers must be updated with this patch.

Performance Enhancements in the Desktop Client

There have been a number of performance enhancements when using the desktop client over a WAN (Wide Area Network).

• Faster Delegation of Items and Requests in the desktop client and VS .Net when running over a WAN. 
• Faster display of the parts and directory displays when running the desktop client over a WAN. 
• 112746: Performance improved when displaying a large number of attributes in the desktop client.
• 112749: Performance improved when scrolling large lists of requests.

New Features in Dimensions CM 10.1.1

Enhancements to Merging of Item Revisions 

The Merge Item Revisions functions have been enhanced in the desktop client to enable local work files to be included in the merge, and to be selected as the ancestor or target for the merge.

Both the web client and desktop client now enable an existing item revision to be selected as the target for the merge. This allows conflicting revisions of a file to be logically merged without invoking the PVCS Merge tool, and without creating a new revision. This updates the pedigree of the item to mark an existing revision as being the result of the merge without changing its contents.

Deploying Baselines

You can now select any baseline for deployment. You could previously only deploy baselines that were attached as sub-projects to your current project. In the web client, the Deploy option is available for a selected baseline from the Baselines tab. In the desktop client, the Deploy option is generally available from the pull-down or popup menu for a selected baseline in the catalog.

Requirement Baselines Now Visible in the Web and Desktop Client

It is now possible to select requirements from baselines as well as collections in the My Current Project view. Expanding the Requirements node shows requirement baselines as well as collections. These are distinguished by having a different icon from a collection. Selecting the baseline displays the requirements belonging to that baseline.

Option to Copy Files on Deployment

There is now the option to have item files copied to the new deployment area when they are deployed. This can be set for a specific project. The Options tab of the New Project and Edit Project dialog box now has a Deployment Areas option. When set to "Copy files on deploy", item files are copied to the new deployment area when they are deployed to a new stage but they are not removed from their current area. If this is set to "Move files on deploy", item files are removed from their current deployment area when they are deployed to a new area. There is also an additional option, "Copy files on deployment", that can be set for a project type in the Administration Console. Selecting this checkbox results in new projects of that type defaulting to "Copy files on deploy".

Query Builder Enhancements

The Query Builder dialogs in the Web client and desktop client have been enhanced so that a Null comparison can be made based on whether or not an attribute has been filled in. Search criteria can be added specifying an attribute value of "Is Null" or "Is not Null".

The Query Builder feature in the web client has also been enhanced to include search criteria that were previously only available in the desktop client.

Owning Design Part Field in Synchronize Wizard and Explorer Plug-in

You can now override the owning design part for new items when using the Windows Explorer Plug-in and the Synchronize Wizard. By default, the owning design part for a new item is determined from the upload rules but it can now be overridden at various levels. It can be set in the "Set as Working Location" dialog box for the root folder of a working location in the Windows Explorer. It can also be set in the Properties tab for an individual file. 

The Synchronize Wizard will use any such settings that have been made in the working location and also allow the user to enter an owning design part at the root, folder, or file level when performing a synchronization.

New Platforms and Integrations 

The following server platforms are now supported: 

• HP-UX Itanium 64-bit
• SuSE Linux 32 bit

The following integrations are now supported:

• Eclipse 3.2
• Quality Center 9.0
• Websphere Application Server 6
• Remedy ARS 7.0

The following browsers are now supported for the Dimensions CM Administration Console and Web client:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0
• Firefox 2.0

Enhancements to VM Migration

The following enhancements have been added to the Version Manager Migration Console:

• You can now remove migration definitions from the Migration Console. 
• You can now specify baseline types or templates when mapping version labels to baselines.
• You can now migrate IDE projects from Version Manager to Dimensions CM.

TeamTrack Integration

Synchronizing the Action Description field

You can now synchronize the Action Description to and from Dimensions, but not to the same field in TeamTrack. 

For example:

TeamTrack to Dimensions: You can map a TeamTrack Journal or Memo field to the Dimensions Action Description field. The name of the Dimensions attribute that you need to map is ’--> ACTION_DESCRIPTION’. This mapping takes the text from TeamTrack and adds a new Dimensions Action Description with that text. The following comment is then written back to the mapped TeamTrack field:

***Serena Connect for TT Synchronized***

Dimensions to TeamTrack: You can map a TeamTrack Memo field to the Dimensions Action Description field. The name of the Dimensions attribute that you need to map is ’<-- ACTION_DESCRIPTION’. This mapping takes all the action descriptions from the Dimensions request that were not entered by the user running Dimensions CM Connect for TeamTrack (that is, not action descriptions that originated in TeamTrack), and replaces the text in the TeamTrack field with the new text

Mapping a TeamTrack single selection field to a Dimensions project

You can now map a TeamTrack single selection field to a Dimensions project (use the Dimensions attribute DIMENSIONS_PROJECT). If the field is set in TeamTrack, the Dimensions request will be related to the given project. If the field is unset, the Dimensions request will be unrelated from any project. If a Dimensions request is related to a project, the value will be set on that TeamTrack field. To map a TeamTrack project to a Dimensions project, set the default value for the TeamTrack single selection field that is mapped to the Dimensions project to the appropriate value.

File attachments, notes, and URLs are now synchronized in both directions

File attachments, notes, and URLs are now synchronized in both directions, though you can only create notes and URLs in TeamTrack. Notes are named TTNotexxxx.txt where xxxx is the internal note ID in TeamTrack. This ensures that notes with the same title can be synchronized.

Mapping the Elapsed Time field and/or Time of Day field to a character or number attribute

You can now map the Elapsed Time field and/or Time of Day field to a character or number attribute. The mapping takes the display value of the TeamTrack field and tries to set it on the Dimensions attribute. In the other direction (Dimensions to TeamTrack), to ensure that the TeamTrack field can accept that value, check that the value in Dimensions is entered in the correct format. If it is not, the synchronization of that field will fail. For date fields the TeamTrack value is read as the display value (Dimensions CM Connect for TeamTrack takes the time zone setting of the user running the integration in TeamTrack). This is the value that is entered into Dimensions. To avoid confusion, the time zone setting of the user running Dimensions CM Connect for TeamTrack should be the same as the setting on the Dimensions server.

Visual Studio Integration

The Dimensions rich integration to Visual Studio has been enhanced to include the following:

• For solutions containing multiple projects, synchronization of solutions and projects has been improved to limit the number of times the wizard has to be launched. Synchronization now excludes binary and temporary files from the solutions and project inspected by the wizard. For Visual Studio 2005 the files inspected always match exactly what is contained in the project(s). For Visual Studio 2003 file extension filters are used to control the exclusions.
• When synchronizing projects, the Dimensions project scope is now automatically set for the Synchronize Wizard. 
• When you browse a request you can display and manage relationships with file items using the new Related tab in the request browser. 
• Items can now be actioned, and compared to other files or revisions, on the request browser’s Related tab. 
• The Login dialog box has been changed to always show all defined connections, regardless of their connection status. The connections are filtered into three collections: opened, opened for source control, and unopened. 
• Offline working with source control has been improved. 
• Source control performance has been significantly enhanced, particularly over a WAN. 

Eclipse Integration

The Dimensions rich integration to Eclipse now allows you to store multiple Eclipse projects within a common Dimensions CM project.

Enhancements to E-mail Templates

E-mail templates have been enhanced to support a number of new variable and format changes. These new variables are detailed below:

• DM_COMMANDLINE – The Dimensions command that resulted in the e-mail being generated.
• FULL_CURRENT_OWNER – The fully expanded username of the e-mail variable CURRENT_OWNER.
• FULL_CURRENT_USER – The fully expanded username of the e-mail variable CURRENT_USER.
• FULL_ORGINATOR – The fully expanded username of the e-mail variable ORGINATOR.
• FULL_ACTION_USER – The fully expanded username of the e-mail variable ACTION_USER.
• RELATIONSHIP_TYPE – For requests only, this variable refers to the type of relationships being affected by an e-mail.
• ATTRS_ATTR_ACTION_DESC – For requests only, this variable refers to the full action description of a request. 
• ATTRS_ATTR_ACTION_DESC – For requests only, this variable refers to the full action description of a request.
• ATTRS_ATTR_THIS_ACTION_DESC – For requests only, this variable refers to the current action description of a request.
• ATTRS_ATTR_DETAILED_DESC – For requests only, this variable refers to the current detailed description of a request.

Enhancements to dmemail command

The parameters that can be entered in the dmemail configuration file can now also be specified in the command line. In this case they will take precedence over those options in the configuration file.

The treatment of temporary files has changed. They are no longer accumulated for sending later. They are now created, used, and then deleted for each email. During a long run of dmemail, only a handlful of temporary files should exist.

The following parameters have been added:

• DIGEST - Controls how the messages are digested.
• DIGEST_THRESHOLD - specifies the limit for the number of rows to be digested (default 10000). If the number of rows to be processed is larger than this, then dmemail refuses to work unless DIGEST=0 is in effect. 
• FILTER_SQL - Specifies a "sql where clause component" that will be used to select rows from the MAILS2PROCESS table. An administrator can use this to great effect to test out situations on a live system without sending thousands of mails. The full SQL generated is shown in the log when debug=y. 
• PURGE_ROWS - Specifies whether rows that are ignored by the filter used above, are purged from the table. 
• NO_STOPFILE - Specifying this in the config file will allow the command line program to use scheduling mode, just as if it had been started from the Dimensions pool process.

New Build Template Variables

There are two new Build template variables:

DMALTSERVER

This enables you to change the address of the build server that is defined in the BRD file, typically the server from where the build is launched, and specify the address of an alternative build server.

Usage scenario: When you launch a build from a virtual machine, and are building on a remote node, the address of the build server in the BRD file on the remote node may be the physical machine hosting the virtual machine, and not the actual virtual machine. You can use DMALTSERVER to change the address to that of the virtual machine.

Must be in the following format:

http://<IP address of the machine hosting the build server>:<Tomcat port number>/bws/services/monitor

Example: http://<dimensions-dev>:<8080>/bws/services/monitor

DMXFERSOURCE

To transfers sources automatically to work areas, set the variable DMXFERSOURCE to YES. By default Dimensions, does not transfer sources to work areas.

Enhancements to Baseline Commands

• CRB now includes all specified update and remove requests as related to the baseline; previously only the requests actually “used” to create the baseline were related.
• CBL now relates all ancestor requests included as part of a change request template if one of their dependent descendents contributes to the baseline, previously only the requests actually “used” to create the baseline were related. 

Item Libraries

Item Libraries can now be hosted on Network Attached Storage (NAS) using UNC paths.

Dimensions Build Enhancements

WebSphere 6.0 Support

WebSphere Application Server 6.0 support has been added.

Improved Dimensions 9 upgrade for Build Support

The upgrade from Dimensions 9 now upgrades all build projects to convert them into configurations in Dimensions Build.

Enhancements to Impacted Targets & Build Dialogs

The Impacted Targets dialog box, and the Targets field in the Run Build dialog boxes, have been enhanced to display detailed build dependency information. 

Template Variables

Additional template variables have been added to assist build template writers.

Display Enhancements

The Build Progress display has been improved to show pending messages from the Build Agent which are waiting to be processed.

Logging Enhancements

General enhancements have been made for better logging and saving of dependency information from each build execution.

Miscellaneous Desktop Client Enhancements

The desktop client now uses Download for multiple get operations, significantly improving performance.
(ENH103807: DMROLLOUT: Desktop Client needs to have same WAN performance as Eclipse)

The Pedigree display now shows which item revisions are checked out
(ENH110840 When users had files checked out the Pedigree display did not show them any differently) 

The desktop client can now compare files on a remote node
(ENH107600 Unable to compare files from web client or desktop client with remote nodes)

Miscellaneous Web Client Enhancements

The web client now uses Download for multiple get operations significantly improving performance.
(ENH105786 Performance difference between using Get from Web Client and Download via dmcli)

The web client login page can now be accessed via a link from another page
(ENH103405 Request for the web tools login page be accessed from a link on another web page) 

The web client can now compare files on a remote node
(ENH107600 Unable to compare files from web client or desktop client with remote nodes)

Other Enhancements to Deployment

When creating a new project, the stage of all items can optionally be reset to the initial stage.
(ENH109636 When creating a new project need an option to reset stage to initial stage) 

Deployment now delivers files in a single download command and runs scripts only once, significantly improving performance.
(ENH109691 Deployment is very slow since it runs scripts once per file) 

Return to Contents

New Features in Dimensions CM 10.1

Release date: September 2006

Product Name Changes and New Terminology

Beginning with Dimensions CM 10.1, product name changes took place and terminology changes were also introduced. The following table details the product rebranding:

Current product name	Legacy product name
Serena Command Center*	n/a
Serena Dimensions**
Serena Dimensions Build*	n/a
Serena Dimensions CM	Serena ChangeMan Dimensions
Serena Dimensions RM	Serena RTM
Serena Mover	Serena ChangeMan Mover
Serena PVCS Version Manager	Serena ChangeMan Version Manager

* New product
** Encompasses all Dimensions components

The above product name changes have also led to changes in the Dimensions documentation set. Refer to the Getting Started Guide for a comprehensive list of the Dimensions documentation set.

The following table details the terminology changes:

Current terminology	Legacy terminology
custom list/request list	user list*
custom list/request list	custom list**
deployment area	build area
deployment stage	build stage
inbox	pending list
library cache area***	n/a
privilege***	n/a
project	workset
project working area	workset root directory
request	change document
user interface profile***	n/a
work area***	n/a

* Desktop client
** Web client and Visual Studio .NET Add In
*** New term. See the User's Guide and Process Modeling User's Guide for details of these new terms.

The latest Dimensions 10.1 documentation reflects the new terms, so if you are using a new Dimensions 10.1 component with a component from an earlier release of Dimensions (for example, the Migration Console in conjunction with Dimensions 9.1), you must bear in mind the terminology changes when working with the older components.

NOTE: Certain specialized features will continue to use legacy terminology, but the new terminology will be used when describing these features in the documentation. These features comprise:

• The Dimensions CM Command-Line Interface (DMCLI).
• The public Dimensions CM C /C++ Developer's Toolkit and Java API (DMPMCLI).
• The Dimensions CM Data Interchange File Format (PDIFF).

What's New for the Developer

For the developer, this release offers productivity and usability improvements in the following key areas.

Projects

Dimensions 10.1 replaces "worksets" with a more powerful capability called "projects". Projects are fully supported Dimensions objects with customizable lifecycles, user-definable attributes, and granular security options supported by the new Dimensions privileges model.

Requests Related to Projects

Requests (change documents) can now be related to projects. This enables you to easily determine which requests you should be working on for a specific project.

Optimistic Locking

Optimistic locking, also called "pragmatic locking" or "merge on check in", is now supported. Optimistic locking enables you to check a file in without first having checked it out. The file metadata stored in your work area is used to ensure that the correct version is updated.

Synchronize Wizard

The Synchronize Wizard compares a set of folders and files located in a work area with the item revisions in a Dimensions CM project and determines the changes that have occurred between them. It provides a graphical display containing icons and text descriptions. Based on this comparison, the Synchronize Wizard can make updates to the work area and the Dimensions CM project as necessary.

Visual Studio 2003 and 2005 Rich Integrations

Dimensions integrates the request management functionality of Dimensions CM directly into the Visual Studio environment. This allows you to simplify and automate the identification, management, and processing of change requests while working within Microsoft Visual Studio.

Eclipse Rich Integration

Dimensions integrates the request and version management functionality of Dimensions CM directly into the Eclipse environment. The new integration simplifies and automates the identification, management, and processing of requests within the Eclipse design environment. It also includes improved source control functionality, including support for optimistic locking and project baseline creation. The integration is supported on Eclipse 3.0 and 3.1.

Windows Explorer Integration

Dimensions provides an integration with Microsoft Windows Explorer that allows you to:

• View the properties of a file in relation to the item in the repository from which it originates.
• Perform item operations such as check in, check out, and cancel check out.
• Use optimistic locking features to synchronize the files or folders in your local area with the corresponding project files or folders in the repository.

New Features in the Client Tools

Key enhancements in the desktop client and web client include:

• Project view: The client tools include a tree structure that shows the objects that are related to your current project. You can expand and select the various nodes to display objects in the content area. The nodes correspond to the aspects of the project that you can work with, including folders, design parts, work areas, deployment areas, inbox, catalog, and sub-projects. This view provides fast access to all of your project artifacts from one view. Additionally, the desktop client includes a cross-project catalog and inbox, allowing you to view the objects for the current product.

• Queries: The client tools include a query builder that lets you select lists of objects according to selected criteria. Unlike filters, queries enable you to specify sophisticated filtering conditions that can be combined using Boolean operators. You can also specify which columns in the list are displayed and the sort order. You can make a query public, so that it is available to other users.

• Pending requests: The client tools enable you to view the current role assignments for a selected request, and view the users who currently have that request in their inboxes. You can also view the privileges for a user for the request.

• Web client customization: You can now customize which columns are displayed in the web client, as well as other display settings.

New Java API

The dmclient Java API provides full, programmatic access to the features of Dimensions CM. The API allows you to create and manipulate versioning, change management, and process modeling data while under the control of the permissions of Dimensions CM and the change management rules framework. The API is compatible with JDK 1.4.2 and later and all Dimensions CM supported platforms.

Dimensions Command-Line Help

When working at the Dimensions command line, you can invoke text-based help for any Dimensions command. The help returns the full name and complete syntax of the command. To invoke help for a command, type: help <command-name>

Area Management

This release introduces the concept of areas. A project can typically have areas associated with it to which Dimensions CM will automatically copy versions of item files when you perform certain operations. There are three types of area:

• Work Area: An area associated with a project for a particular user or number of users, so that their file operations such as check in, check out, and so on, take place in the context of that area. Multiple developers can also share the same work area, to facilitate collaboration on shared files.

• Deployment Area: An area associated with a stage in the lifecycle for a product such that item files are moved to that area when the item revisions reach a particular stage in the Global Stage Lifecycle.

• Library Cache: An area that contains copies of item files for a project to improve the efficiency of Dimensions item operations when users access a database over a remote network. When a user needs to access an item file, Dimensions looks in the library cache area first to see whether the file is already there before attempting to retrieve it from the remote server.

Native Unicode

As businesses become increasingly subject to the global economy, participants and contributors to the application lifecycle may span multiple geographies, languages, and locations. Native Unicode supports local character-set input and maintains consistency and integrity across the CM repository, regardless of location.

"Air-Gap" Replication

In Dimensions 10.1, Replicator can now be configured to support "Air-Gap" replication, which is replication between Dimensions servers that are not connected via the network. This is particularly applicable to multi-level security environments or when direct network access across sites is not permitted.

In this scenario, the replication process consists of 3 phases:

1. Replicator copies data from Dimensions to a physical media. The transferred files are secured using timestamps and a comprehensive audit trail.

2. Data from the physical media may then be transported to a subordinate site and loaded.

3. Logs generated on the loading phase are then synchronized with the master to ensure a complete audit trail, including timestamps and any changes.

Air-Gap replication is the recommended solution for customers currently using TBO/TBI.

What's New for the Administrator

For this administrator, this release offers the following key improvements and features.

Installation

Improvements to the installation include:

• A common installation into a single database for Dimensions CM and Dimensions RM.

• The ability to install the Administration Command-Line Interface (dmpmcli) on a Dimensions client machine.

• The ability to install client components to a directory path that contains spaces.

• For the Dimensions for z/OS installation, the ability to customize Dimensions variables via a configuration file.

Privileges and Groups

This release introduces the concepts of privileges and groups. A privilege is either a particular operation that can be performed on a class of object, or an administrative function. You can assign privileges to specific users, groups, or roles, or apply them generally to any user or under particular rules.

Examples of privileges include:

• Delete Release
• Browse Request
• Action to Any State Request

A group is a set of users to which you can assign a privilege, which assigns that privilege to all the users that belong to that group. Groups provide a manageable way of granting and denying privileges to large numbers of users.

Increase in User-Defined Attributes

With an Oracle database, you can now define up to 996 user-defined attributes.

User Interface Profiles

You can set up user interface profiles that determine which functions are accessible in the client tools, and assign them to particular users or groups. For example, you could set up a profile to display functions related to change control or version control only. UI profiles do not necessarily relate to privileges.

Notifications

You can subscribe users or groups to certain events (for example, an item or request arrives in a user's inbox, or an item is added or removed from a project) so that the users will receive an e-mail notification when the event occurs. You can also specify that multiple notifications are to be consolidated into an e-mail digest to reduce the number of e-mail messages sent.

OS Password Change in Dimensions CM Clients

On Windows, it is now possible for users to change their OS password from within the Dimensions CM clients. Frequently users connect to a Dimensions Server on UNIX where the authentication is processed, but those users don't have the knowledge or access to log into the UNIX system to update passwords. By making this capability available within the clients, users can perform their own password management without calling on their system administrators.

Dimensions Build

The new Dimensions Build component, a standard part of Dimensions CM, extends the capabilities introduced in the integration of ChangeMan Builder with Dimensions. Dimensions Build adds these benefits:

• Completely configurable sets of build stages.
• Open architecture that allows for the use of external build engines.
• Integrated scheduler to control when builds occur.
• Build environment integrated with the Dimensions CM engine to manage versions of the build environment.
• Integration with Dimensions CM role management to control build administration and execution.
• Audit trail stored within Dimensions CM.
• New build engine for z/OS offering high performance and parallel build execution.

Supported platforms are identical to the platforms supported by the Administration Console.

If you are an existing user of ChangeMan Builder, the integration with Dimensions Build enables you to import Openmake targets into Dimensions Build, manage your build configurations, and compile your targets using the Openmake engine. For details, see the Dimensions Build User's and Administrator's Guide.

NOTE: Builds are synchronous and you must wait for the builds to complete before the desktop client can display feedback.

PVCS Version Manager Migration Tools

This release provides extended migration tools that allow you to easily upgrade from PVCS Version Manager to Dimensions CM. You can migrate all or part of your Version Manager project structure to specific Dimensions design parts, projects, and item types. You can also migrate Version Manager labels and promotion groups to Dimensions multi-valued attributes, projects, and baselines.

Qlarius Sample Database

This release introduces the Qlarius sample database. Qlarius provides a rich overview of the application development lifecycle, from requirement definition to product release. Qlarius demonstrates integration to Dimensions RM, supplies sample development projects in Eclipse and Visual Studio, and supports a number of sample reports in Command Center.