What's new in SCM4ALL 4.3

SCM4ALL offers a secure and flexible process-centric software change management solution for both local and distributed development teams, and manages and automates SOA, Agile and traditional development processes. It complements existing version management tools by automating the complete software life-cycle management process, offering a single point of control and delivering support for your build, deploy, release and software life-cycle management and the associated approval processes. SCM4ALL helps reducing build complexity, solving complex deployment issues and accelerating release cycles.

A tailored life-cycle including development, test, quality assurance and production can be implemented, offering a comprehensive framework across all major platforms including Windows, UNIX, Linux and even Z/0S mainframe systems.

SCM4ALL 4.3 includes the following important enhancements.
 

New functionalities:

Housekeeping Build Archive

An intelligent housekeeping functionality to control the size of the Build Archive is now available in the Global Administration section.

The “Housekeeping” screen contains an information panel displaying an overview of the Build Archive (total archive size, number of build files, available space,..) and a search panel to filter out candidate build files for deletion (deployed or not, size greater than, …). Housekeeping actions are logged for history reasons. You also have the possibility to synchronize the physical representation of the Build Archive on the file system with the logical representation of the Build Archive in the SCM4ALL database.

 

History and Event Logging of Global and Project Administration Definitions

All create, update and delete operations of Project and Global Administration objects and components are logged in the SCM4ALL Database. This allows for a better auditing and traceability of the SCM4ALL administration:

  1. A “History View” by component (available via the “Overview” screens) lets you check the complete history trail of a component. It also allows comparing previous versions with the current state.
     
     
     
  2. A “History Log” (available via the Global Administration submenu) shows all recent modifications for Global Administration components.
     
 

Machine (Agent) Status and Log Information

A new “Machine Detailed Status” screen is available via the “status” icon on the “Machines Overview”.

This detailed overview displays the status of the Agent Daemon running on the Machine and indicates whether it is reachable by the SCM4ALL Server. It also indicates the tasks the Agent is handling and contains a log panel showing the last 150 lines of output of the Agent Daemon process running on the Machine.
 
 

Enhanced Life-Cycle Flexibility

  1. Support for optional Levels: possibility to add a “condition” to a Level, in order to bypass certain Levels in the Life-Cycle. This makes it possible to have (by example) an optional Training Level between Quality Assurance and Production, which is only updated when necessary.
     
     
  2. Possibility to redeliver on Test and Production Levels: a Build which was previously delivered successfully may be delivered again, if necessary with different build or deploy parameters.
  3. Less restrictive Rollback conditions on Test and Production Levels: all Builds delivered to a Level may be rollbacked, independently of the build number on the next Level in the Life-Cycle. This makes it possible to first test a Rollback on a Test Level before rollbacking the Production Level.
 

New Builds and Deploys Overview

A new overview in the Desktop section (available via the Level Requests submenu) allows searching for actions (Build or Deploy) by Machine and/or Environment.

 
 

New Semantics for Post-Approvals and Post-Notifications

Post-Approvals and Post-Notification are now applied at the end of all actions on a Level, and not before delivering to the next Level in the Life-Cycle.

This way, a Post-Approval now enables a verification moment after the execution of the Build(s)/Deploy(s) on a Test or Production Level. It adds an extra condition to the determination of the end status of the actions on the Level: not only must all Build(s) or Deploy(s) have ended successfully, but the Post-Approval must also have been granted by an SCM4ALL user. As long as the Post-Approval is not handled, the action’s status will not be set "Success". If a Post-Approval is rejected, the Build can never be delivered to the next Level in the Life-Cycle.
 

New Project Stream Dependency Type

Possibility to use the latest Production Source/Build Result.

This dependency type allows splitting up the Life-Cycle, e.g., to allow people from development and production to work each of them in their own project to avoid responsibility conflicts [and to set up customized workflows].

 

Possibility to Hide/Unhide Projects and Project Streams

An extra “Hide/Unhide” icon allows filtering out data of obsolete Projects or Project branches in several Project and Desktop Overviews.

 

Better Status Output of Level and Environment Phases

This allows a better follow-up of the different steps involved in the Build or Deploy process, e.g., show that a particular phase is currently "running".
 

New Licensing System

The existing licensing system is replaced by an in-house controlled system, which is easier to install and maintain.
 

New Demo Installation Procedure

The new SCM4ALL Demo Application is easier to install and has an integrated web server, database and versioning system.
 

Enhanced functionalities:

  • New “Duration” field on the Level Request and Environment Logs
  • Total Level Request Time calculated for Level Requests
  • Multiple selects possible on several Desktop search panels
  • Usability reorganization of the Global Administration and Desktop menus
  • Several extended project audit checks
  • Reorganization of the Life-Cycle Overview
  • User Groups are also visible in velocity mail templates
  • The Agent process produces more informative logging on the INFO log level
  • Upgrade of the MySQL connector
  • Support for Groups in Groups when connecting to LDAP via JAAS
 

Bug Fixes

  • Multiple small bug fixes and optimizations have also been implemented. See the readme/release notes for more details.
 

For further information, please contact IKAN at:

+32 15 44 5040