Username:
Password:
Please type the Two words with a space between them to prove you are a real human being.
3SL is pleased to announce that we released Cradle-6.5 at the end of July 2011. This is the latest new release of our Requirements Management and Systems Engineering environment and is a major enhancement from previous releases. Cradle-6.5 is a full product release, and is accompanied by written documentation and related materials.
The Cradle-6.5 release provides some significant enhancements to the previous Cradle-6.4 release. For a detailed list of all enhancements and bug fixes that is also grouped by Cradle module, please consult:
The major elements of the Cradle-6.5 release are:
Cradle-6.5 has a new format for its databases. If you upgrade to Cradle-6.5 you must convert all your databases to the new format. A converter is supplied with the release that will perform the conversions for you. The Cradle-6.5 installers automatically detect the need to run this converter, to ensure that the upgrade is as simple as possible.
It is also possible to upgrade to a new release by creating a new Cradle installation with new databases in new directories and using exports and imports to move data between the databases of the old and new versions. With this approach, you could use the new version and its databases, or you could revert to the old Cradle version and its databases. These two sets of databases would initially have the same contents, but this would remain true only for so long as data is not changed in one set that is not also changed in the other.
Customers who adopt this approach use a procedure similar to:
We always recommend using the database converters that are supplied with Cradle.
Please be advised that in Cradle-6.0 we changed the internal representation of text inside frames, so that it better supports the concept of paragraphs and is far less based on the concept of text being a list of lines. This means that the database converter for Cradle-6.0, the executable cvt_5760.exe, performs some text manipulations as part of the database conversion. If you export from Cradle-5.7 and import into Cradle-6.5, then these text manipulations will not occur. You may therefore find a difference between a database conversion and an export followed by an import.
Cradle-6.5 has some major enhancements. It is a major improvement over Cradle-6.4, Cradle-6.3 and Cradle-6.2 and a very major improvement over Cradle-6.1 or any previous release. We would like you to use Cradle-6.5 in preference to Cradle-6.4.1 or any earlier version. That is why we released it!
Please consult the Cradle-6.5 Release Notes to see if any of the enhancements or bug fixes are relevant to you.
3SL will continue to support Cradle-6.1 through Cradle-6.4 until the next major version of Cradle is released.
However, if you are using Cradle-5.7, or an earlier release, then we urge you to upgrade to Cradle-6.5 because:
You cannot mix Cradle-6.5 with any earlier release of Cradle. This means that if you decide to install Cradle-6.5 anywhere, then you must install it everywhere.
Specifically:
These incompatibilities are failsafe. That is, if you should accidentally fail to upgrade a client to Cradle-6.5, then starting that client will not adversely affect the operation of Cradle-6.5, as the Cradle-6.5 servers will ignore connection attempts from clients of any previous version.
Cradle-6.5 uses different Security Codes to all previous versions. Before you can install Cradle-6.5, you will need to request a new Security Code.
Cradle-6.5 Security Codes will only be provided to users who have an active maintenance agreement with 3SL or one of our partners and distributors.
As a 3SL customer, you can obtain a temporary Cradle-6.5 Security Codes directly from our website. These codes last for 40 days. For further information, please visit the 3SL website, login, and visit the Customer part of the Support area within the site.
If your Cradle system includes named user licences, then you will need a new named_users file from 3SL for these named users since the named_users file is also linked to a specific Cradle version. You should receive this file automatically, but if you do not then please request it from 3SL.
Please note that the release of Cradle-6.5 is not an opportunity for you to change the user names encoded in your named_users file. You can change these user names either when you renew your Cradle maintenance or if you purchase new Cradle licences.
All Cradle-6.5 download files for Windows and Linux/UNIX were added to our website and to our mirror site on 1st August 2010 and refreshed on 17th August 2010. If you downloaded Cradle-6.5 before 17th August 2011, then we encourage you to discard your original download and download the distribution released on 17th August 2011.
For Windows, the file to download is: Cradle65_Setup.exe
Note Cradle-6.5 only supports 32-bit Windows platforms, including Windows Vista and Windows 7. It will also run on 64-bit Windows platforms. However, Cradle-6.5 does not support 64-bit versions of Microsoft Office, and specifically Cradle-6.5 does not support 64-bit Office 2010.
For UNIX, your must download the boot and core.Z filesets, and also download the fileset that contains the executable files for your architecture:
So, if you are running on UNIX, you will need to download a minimum of 3 filesets.
If you have a UNIX server that provides executables for multiple architectures, then you will need to download boot, core.Z and filesets for all architectures provided by your server.
If you are running a mixed UNIX and Windows environment, such as UNIX servers and Windows clients, then you will need to download the Windows self-extracting executable and all UNIX filesets that are needed for your environment.
3SL has a dedicated 8 Mbit/sec Internet connection which means that the largest of these files can be downloaded in 6 minutes. Our mirror site provides even faster downloads.
Back to this newsletter index.
