Release DBMS InterSystems Caché 2017.1

Hello! Just yesterday, the release of the next version of the Caché DBMS was numbered 2017.1. We are glad to share the list of changes in the first version of 2017. As always, first we publish a link to the full list of changes (in English).

FIPS 140-2 cryptographic standard support for Caché Data-at-Rest encryption

In this release, Caché introduced the ability to configure the DBMS to work with the ratified FIPS 140-2 library (available only for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 64-bit). Detailed information can be found in a separate article: " FIPS 140-2 Compliance for Caché Database Encryption "

OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect support enhancements

OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect support has been updated and now includes the following features:

• Support OpenID Connect Discovery 1.0 in accordance with the standard . During client configuration, the Management Portal now provides a new detection option that can be used instead of manually filling in information about the authorization server. The class % SYS.OAuth2.Registration now provides the Discover () method.
• Support for dynamic client registration (OpenID Connect Dynamic Client Registration) in accordance with the draft standard . During client configuration, the Management Portal provides a new registration option that can be used instead of manually filling in client information on the authorization server. The class % SYS.OAuth2.Registration now provides the RegisterClient () method.
• JSON Web Key (JWK) and JSON Web Key Sets (JWKS) support in accordance with the proposed standard for encrypting, decrypting, signing, and verifying JWTs signatures (JSON Web Tokens).
• Since JWKS provides the means to represent a public key / private key pair; it is no longer necessary to use a certificate / private key pair for this purpose. The ability to use a certificate / private key pair is present for backward compatibility.
• Rotation of keys (when using JWKS). The OAuth 2.0 configuration pages in the Management Portal provide options for key rotation.
• Management Portal provides the ability to revoke tokens of specific users. This feature is provided for convenience and complements the existing client API.

All features supported in 2016.2 will work from 2017.1. For example, you may have a client and an authorization server running on different versions of Caché. However, new features are not supported by members working on version 2016.2.

In release 2017.1, changes were made to the configuration of the OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect classes. Caché will automatically update your saved configurations.

DeepSee Improvements

This release includes the following DeepSee enhancements:

• New control widgets for dashboards.
• Improved export of DeepSee components.
• New "DayOfWeek" feature.
• New plugin "CreateTable".
• Improvements in setting default values ​​for filters.
• Improvements in setting complex values ​​for filters.
• Drilldown expressions (drilldown) now use expression builder (expressionBuilder).
• SQL-based listings now support dynamic sorting.

Mirroring enhancements

This release includes the following mirroring enhancements:

• Significant performance improvements in the backup and asynchronous links of the mirror when recording updates (received from the main link of the mirror) to a local copy of the mirror logs. Demonstrated a 10-fold increase in throughput in the transfer of logs, which has expanded the scalability of mirror systems. As a result of these changes, systems using a backup mirror link for disaster recovery will also receive improved application performance and responsiveness of the main link.
• The process of improving the status of asynchronous links for disaster recovery (Disaster Recovery) has been improved. When the link status in the emergency scenario is raised, before it becomes the main link, the link polls all the other links of the mirror in order to get the most relevant (at the time of the accident) log data from them. This ensures that disaster recovery includes all available data and other “surviving” asynchronous links to join the new main link. In addition, an intermediate step is maintained, allowing manual validation on a link whose status has been upgraded before allowing it to become a major one.
• qcontrol list and ccontrol qlist now include the link type of the mirror and its status.

Improved DocBook Search

Search on DocBook received improvements that allow you to quickly search for information. Now in the search results in the first place displays the most used documents. Search page received new options that allow you to narrow your search. The following filters are available:

• Search topics with all or any of the specified words. In previous releases, the search was always performed on all words.
• Full-text search or search for a full match with or without a case. In previous releases, only full-text search was used, which deleted special characters, and then searched for all words with a common root. Full match search saves special characters and searches only for the specified words. For example, if you search for the word “^ global”, then the full-text search will find all occurrences of the word “global”, and the search by complete coincidence will find only the occurrences of “^ global”.
• Now you can search for documentation of a specific product.
• Search for a specific book of documentation.
• Search by tags. Allows you to search by words associated with such terms as DeepSee, Zen, HL and BPL.

Feature tracker

In 2017.1, we present a safe and reliable approach to periodically gather information about the functions used by Caché, to maintain the integrity of relations with our customers.

Feature Tracker is controlled by a Caché task. By default, the task is suspended and the Feature Tracker is inactive, but it can easily be started by the user. Feature Tracker will help us prioritize which features of Caché to improve in the first place, based on what features our customers use.

Feature Tracker collects Caché instance attributes (product type, version, license, platform, etc.) and technology usage, including ECP, mirroring, encryption, and SQL. Feature Tracker does not collect information about license usage, database attributes, applications, errors, authentication, client data, and configurations.

Feature Tracker weekly sends the collected data (as an XML file) to a Caché instance on the InterSystems side using SSL. You can review the latest collected data to make sure that the process of collecting information is transparent. If for some reason Feature Tracker cannot transmit information, the transfer is "silently" complete without any effect on the operation of the Caché instance.

More information about Feature Tracker can be found in the Caché documentation in Feature Tracker Collects Usage Statistics .

Note: During the test period (Field Test), the Feature Tracker is active by default.

iKnow REST API and other improvements

This release introduces the REST API for accessing information in iKnow domains directly from client RESTful applications. Most typical queries are available through a simple, uniform interface, where individual queries can be customized to produce detailed or simple results, depending on the requirements of the application.

IKnow's REST API provides documentation using the Swagger specification, which is the basis for the OpenAPI specification.

Attention:

One way to view the iKnow REST API documentation is to use the Swagger UI, either through a web browser at petstore.swagger.io , or using the Swagger UI toolkit.

Enter one of the following URLs in the Swagger UI form and then click the "Explore" button.
For the Caché instance used for development with minimal security settings, enter: http: // localhost: port-number / api / iknow / v1 / user / swagger

For a Caché instance with password access, enter:
http: // localhost: port-number / api / iknow / v1 / user / swagger? CacheUserName = user-name & CachePassword = password

In addition, this release contains significant improvements in the iKnow Knowledge Portal demo interface (an interface for working with the contents of your iKnow domain), as well as some extensions of the iKnow Architect interface for managing domain definition.

Atelier

Atelier is a new Eclipse-based IDE for Caché, available separately from Caché and has its own release cycle. Therefore, new features described in the Atelier documentation are presented in each new release of Atelier. Atelier IDE brings the power and popularity of Eclipse to the development for InterSystems Caché. It allows you to develop Caché applications using a modern file IDE and is responsible for downloading applications to the Caché server, where they can be launched or debugged.

Future development will focus on Atelier. The studio will remain available for installation, and developers can continue to use it for development. However, the Studio will be regarded as a product on support and will not receive new functionality. Some minor Studio errors may not be fixed, depending on the resources required to correct them and the severity of the problem.

Atelier is available as a standalone application in addition to Caché or Ensemble. You can choose to use a separate Atelier installer or a plugin for an existing Eclipse installation. Atelier uses the Eclipse auto-update mechanism to help users get the latest version in a timely manner. You can download Atelier on a separate download page .

Other changes

Also in this release are presented many minor improvements and fixes. If you are upgrading from an existing installation, please see the detailed list of changes in the Upgrade Checklist section.

• OpenSSL library updated to version v1.0.2h.
• Support for the Thai time format has been expanded and improved.
• Lightweight statistics provide SQL query performance information.
• "SQL Read Verified" provides access to unconfirmed changes like "Read Uncommitted", but also rechecks compliance with query conditions.
• Improved job queue manager.
• Improvements in XSLT Gateway.
• Improvements in the JDBC driver, including faster and more reliable pre-parser.
• .NET 4.5 support in .NET Gateway, Caché eXtreme and ADO.NET.