This readme contains important information about Dimensions CM 14.3.3.
Last updated 11th July 2017
Dimensions CM 14.3.3 is the version that immediately follows 14.3.2.
All of the features, changes, and fixes that were made in 14.3, 14.3.1, and 14.3.2 are included in 14.3.3.
Dimensions CM 14.3.3 supports new installations—you do not need to install a previous version of CM before installing this version.
All the new features are described in detail in the Dimensions CM documentation. You can download a searchable PDF portfolio of all the documents from the documentation center.
The CM Documentation Roadmap, a complete overview of the CM documentation, helps you find the information you are looking for and is available online here.
The following documents have been extensively rewritten and simplified:
You can watch videos of Dimensions CM features online here.
Contact technical support online here.
Download detailed information about supported platforms and software configurations here.
Information regarding third-party software copyrights and licensing is available at the root of the Dimensions CM server installation:
Serena recognizes that virtualization technology provides significant utility and value to our customers. As such, Serena conducts functional testing and certifies our products using virtualization technology in addition to native environments. While Serena expects that our products will function properly when running on supported platforms in a virtualized environment as well as a native environment, there may be functional and performance limitations. Serena will not require customers to recreate and troubleshoot every issue in a non-virtualized environment, however there may be circumstances in which such action may be required. Serena will only make this request when there is reason to believe that the virtualized environment is a contributing factor to the issue. If the issue cannot be reproduced in a supported non-virtualized environment, customers will need to refer their issues to their virtualization vendor.
Note: This release contains important performance improvements.
The following features have been added in this release.
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.
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.
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.
The following features and enhancements were added in the 14.3.2 release (November 2016).
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.
Multiple improvements including:
Multiple improvements including:
The following features and enhancements were added in the 14.3.1 release (August 2016).
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.
If you use Dimensions Build, update your scheduler passwords as the method used to encrypt them has changed.
The following features and enhancements were added in the 14.3 release (June 2016).
Integration with Deployment Automation
Eclipse IDE Integration with Apache Maven
You can manage your team's requests, using Agile views, in Dimensions CM Pulse. Request planning enables you to:
Request planning can include:
For more information see the Pulse Help.
You can optionally install Deployment Automation (DA) and use it, instead of Dimensions Deployment, to promote or demote baselines. The benefits of using DA include:
For details see the Dimensions CM Deployment Guide.
The following commands have been updated to support SDA:
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.
The integration with Docker provides a Docker Private Registry and enables you to:
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 support.
In addition to request planning many enhancements have been made to Dimensions CM Pulse, including:
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 following new command have been added to dmcli, the Dimensions CM command-line interface:
For details see the Dimensions CM Command-Line Reference.
When you authenticate against an LDAP server you can now optionally synchronize Dimensions CM groups and LDAP groups. Synchronizing groups has these advantages:
For details see Appendix A in the Dimensions CM System Administration Guide.
The CM Eclipse IDE now supports M2Eclipse providing a tight integration for Apache Maven.
HP ALM Quality Center versions 11 and 12 are now supported.
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:
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 is now supported, for details see the Dimensions CM System Administration Guide.
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.
For details about hardware scaling requirements see the Architecture and Optimization Guide.
For full details about installing this release see these documents:
To upgrade from Dimensions CM 2009 R2 or 12.x:
To prevent issues with data that was created with a pre-14.1.x release of Dimensions CM, do the following:
The VRS upgrade retains all the existing project structure, project history, and baseline data. This avoids the need to upgrade all projects and baselines at once and ensures that an error during upgrade does not result in a loss of data. However, database size may increase dramatically as it contains both the old and new data. Before performing the upgrade you should increase the space allocated for PCMS_DATA by at least 50% and the space allocated for PCMS_IDX by at least 100%.
To prevent poor performance you must recompute database statistics after an upgrade. If you choose to perform a series of partial upgrades you must recompute statistics after each partial upgrade.
After all projects and baselines have been upgraded you can drop the tables containing the pre-upgrade data. Backup and create an export of these tables (or the entire database) before dropping them:
XII_WS_FILES
XII_WS_DIRS
XII_PSH_REQ_RELS
XII_PSH_PSH_RELS
XII_PSH XII_PREV_CHANGES
XII_PART_PART_RELS
XII_PART_ITEM_RELS
XII_MIGRATED_CHANGES
XII_ITEM_SETS
XII_DP_ITEMS_SETS
XII_BASELINE_ITEM_FILES
XII_BASELINE_ITEM_DIRS
To upgrade from previous versions of Dimensions CM 14.x, run the Dimensions CM 14.3.3 installers.
If you are upgrading a Dimensions CM installation that is already configured to use the CM Single Sign On Server (SSO), do the following.
Note The steps below are not required if the installation is configured to use Serena Business Manager as the SSO server.
You must install Dimensions Connect for SBM when you upgrade the Dimensions CM server to a new version. For example, if you upgrade the Dimensions CM server to 14.3.3 you must also install the 14.3.3 version of Dimensions Connect for SBM. If not the integration may not work as expected. See the Dimensions CM Connect for Serena Business Manager User's Guide.
Shut down the Serena Common Tomcat before starting any Dimensions CM software upgrade. The upgrade installer is not able to perform this step so you must do it manually. If you do not shut down Tomcat, the Web archive (.war) files used by the upgraded Dimensions CM Web tools may not expand correctly, causing files to be missing from these tools.
When you stop the Dimensions Service on Windows the dmschedule and dmemail processes may continue to run for a period after the other processes have exited. Check that these processes have terminated before upgrading.
(Windows only) Check that the Microsoft Management Console is closed before starting an installation or upgrade.
If an error message is displayed during installation stating that Dimensions CM is unable to connect to the database, do the following:
If you installed and uninstalled a trial version of Araxis Merge the Dimensions CM instance of Araxis Merge can appear as not registered. Remove the expired license in the Windows registry by deleting the "SerialNumber" value under: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Araxis. The registration information provided by Dimensions CM will be used instead.
If you cannot install on Windows Server 2012R2 with Oracle 12 check that:
The installer displays incorrect messages when you upgrade from Dimensions CM 12.1 with SSO to 14.3.2 without SSO. You can ignore these messages as they do not have any impact on the installation and all files are installed correctly.
During installation and upgrade a new version of the ALF events configuration file ($DM_ROOT/dfs/alf_events_config.xml) is installed for Pulse and your customizations are overridden. Your original file is backed up and you can merge your customizations into the new version.
In Dimensions CM 14.3.3 the dmappsrv process writes directly to the local item libraries. This revised access mechanism provides performance enhancements, improved security, and server scalability. Check that the Dimensions CM Pool User has permissions to read and write to all local item library directories. To find out who is the Pool User check the value of the parameter -user in dfs/listener.dat.
To disable this behavior, in the Dimensions CM server dm.cfg file set the variable DM_DISALLOW_DIRECT_LOCAL_LIBRARY_CHECKIN to Y and restart the Dimensions listener.
Before installing on AIX, run these commands to configure your environment:
export EXTSHM=MSEG
ulimit -f unlimited -n unlimited -s unlimited -m unlimited -t unlimited -v unlimited -d unlimited
Run the installer with:
LDR_CNTRL=MAXDATA=0X0000000@DSA ./setupDimensionsAIX64.bin <optional parameters>
For dmwebservices2 web applications the connectioncache library has been replaced with the Apache Commons Pool2 library. To change the setting for the pool:
The following configuration file is no longer used: webapps\dmwebservices2\WEB-INF\classes\connectioncache.properties
Backup Dimensions CM REST services before upgrading.
After the upgrade is complete:
If you are installing a CM server into a remote SQL Server, you must use an existing and pre-configured ODBC. Creating a new ODBC as part of the installation will not work.
If Visual Studio 2017 is running, installation of the integration may fail silently. Close all instances of Visual Studio 2017 before you install CM clients.
The following features and functionality are not supported in Dimensions CM 14.3.3:
For a list of all the fixes in Dimensions CM 14.3.3 see this support web page.
For a complete list of fixes in previous releases of Dimensions CM see the Support Knowledgebase and select a CM version.
Microsoft Visual Studio 2017
Source control operations do not work for Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 projects created using Shared Project and Class Library (.NET Standard) templates.
Installing on AIX
If you run an AIX installation on a heavily loaded system, it may fail to exit cleanly, and hang while displaying this message: The InstallShield Wizard has successfully installed Dimensions CM 14.3.3 Choose Finish to exit the wizard. Press 3 to Finish or 5 to Redisplay [3]
Dimensions CM has been installed successfully and you can safely abort the installer.
Microsoft Edge
To use Common Access Card (CAC) in Microsoft Edge, ActivClient version 7.1 (or later) must be installed.
Wind River Workbench 3.3.x
Wind River Workbench version 3.3.x. does not work with this release of CM.
Solution: Use the 14.1 version of the CM plug-in instead, however it does not support the new post 14.1 CM features.
Serena Deployment Automation (SDA)
Eclipse and Maven Integration Installers
The Eclipse and Maven integration installers on Windows Server 2012 R2 may fail with the following error: Installer User Interface Mode Not Supported
Solution: run the installers in compatibility mode.
On Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.x the installers may still fail when run in compatibility mode and display this message: ZeroGu6: Windows DLL failed to load. This is caused by an incompatibility between the Java runtime embedded in the integration installers and recent versions of Windows. To resolve this problem install a 32-bit Java 7 or 8 runtime.
Dimensions CM REST Services
Dimensions CM REST services do not work correctly after upgrading. To fix this problem do the following: