Release 7.5

17th March 2006

IET announces that the next major release of GuardIEn and genIE is now available.

GuardIEn/genIE 7.5 is the next major release to follow Release 7.0.

Highlights of this major new release include:

Gen r7.5 Support

GuardIEn 7.5 has been enhanced to support Gen r7.5 including:

• GuardIEn Toolset interaction for a Gen r7.5 toolset
• Support for Gen r7.5 code generation

Object List+

The Object List window has been replaced with Object List+ which provides powerful searching and browsing of objects. Object List+ is available with an optional Plus Pack that provides powerful model compare functions as well as the ability to invoke custom functions.

Environment Re-work Wizard

The Change Request Re-work wizard has been enhanced to support environment re-work. Environment re-work allows the wizard to help re-work changes within a release, for example from production fix to development. The advantage of using the re-work wizard for this type of re-work is that there has also been an enhancement to system updating so that a change being migrated from development that already exists in production (because it was implemented as an emergency fix) will not be re-implemented into production.

Upload Assistant Without Task Assistant

In previous releases, the Upload Assistant has relied on the Task Assistant to perform the uploads and therefore could not be used without the Task Assistant. This has meant that sites that do not have use of the Task Assistant could not benefit from the major improvements in change management and automated versioning provided by the Upload Assistant.

The Upload Assistant can now operate without the Task Assistant in one of two ways:

• Seamless mode - the Upload Assistant will interact with the toolset to perform the upload seamlessly
• Change Capture only - the Upload Assistant will capture the changes applied in the last upload to the model performed by the user.

genIE XCopy with Substitution

The existing genIE XCopy functions have been enhanced to support substitution of a number of types of object references, such as views, exit states, commands, relationships etc.

This is available in both genIE Direct XCopy and genIE Plug-in XCopy.

New Linkage Review

Linkage Review has been enhanced to provide more functions and improved support for large numbers of models:

• Supports better left/right scrolling to make it easier to review more than 20 models. A left/right scroll bar is now provided and all of the model data is stored on the client, thus improving the scroll response times.
• Extra filters - CR, Release Pack, Linkage Role and name LIKE.
• New Highlight function to show linkages with a timestamp different to the master model.

Enhanced RI Impact Analysis

In previous releases, GuardIEn RI impact analysis relied on the 'IMPUSE' associations between ABs and RITs and also between RITs to determine which programs called/called by RI Triggers. The disadvantage of this approach was that this association data in the encyclopaedia was populated by the code generators and hence was only 100% accurate if the RI triggers and calling programs had previously been generated.

GuardIEn has been enhanced to provide more accurate and comprehensive RI trigger impact analysis.

• The associations between RI triggers are now determined from the data model and GuardIEn does not rely on the IMPUSE associations being correct. This means that GuardIEn can now accurately assess which RI triggers are used by an AB and are used by/use other RI triggers. The RI usage reported in Deliverable Usage and also by the SU expansion step is now accurate even if the RI triggers have not been previously generated.
• The expansion step data model impact will now be able to assess the impact of a data model change on the RI triggers and determine which RI triggers require generation in the event of a change to the data model.
• A new function in Deliverable Usage 'Affects RI Triggers' will display the RI triggers affected by a hypothetical change to an ENT or REL.
• The HE Generate RI Triggers step should be re-sequenced to execute after the Expand step and not before since the RI triggers to be generated are now scoped by the expansion step. Previously the RI triggers needed to be generated before the expansion to ensure that the associations in the model were accurate before the expansion step executed.

Release specific project access

You can now restrict project access to a specified system release rather than the entire project. For example, you could provide a user with 'C' authority for Release 1 only.

Project Copy enhancements

Project Copy has been enhanced:

• A project can now be copied to multiple destination projects. This makes it much easier to make changes to multiple projects, especially in CBD style projects where each component is managed as a separate GuardIEn project.
• When entering project copy, it will pre-select the last 'copy from' project and also optionally also select the other projects that this was copied to.
• The report now only displays records that are actually created, updated or deleted making it easier to detect changes.
• Life-cycles are now synchronised even if deliverables exist for the deliverable. States that do not exist in the source project are removed from the destination project as long as no version/CR exists in that state.

Misc Ease of Use

• New filters and sort options in CR content & DU content make it easier to manage large CRs and DUs
• Bulk status update and filters in Release Pack Scope
• Better Left/Right scrolling for migration when many models involved
• Parallel MVS install from CSE
• HE Install Restart
• JCL procedures/ctllib easier to customise for multiple Gen / Ency
• Subset Assistant default protection

Full release notes are available here