Cradle-5.3 Features

The Cradle-5.3 release provides major new features, bug fixes, and general improvements. The most significant changes are listed below, grouped by Cradle module. For a full list of all enhancements and bug fixes, consult:

The Cradle-5.3 Release Notes

The What’s New document in the Help menus of the Cradle clients

Communications Changes

1. The timeout parameter that Cradle uses to identify duplicate broadcasts has been made a configurable parameter. This will help Linux users of the Cradle API, since Linux tends to use the same port number repeatedly, while other operating systems do not.

Cradle-PDM (Product Data Management) Changes

1. Bulk import facilities now allow auto-numbering options in the current project schema, or the schema being imported, to be temporarily disabled. This allows information to be imported with Overwrite set to On or Merge, even if auto numbering has been enabled.
2. Bulk import facilities now allow alert reporting options in the current schema, or in the schema being imported, to be temporarily suppressed. This prevents large numbers of alerts being generated when items are imported with Owner set to As in File.
3. Bulk import facilities now allow link rules in the current schema, or in the schema being imported, to be temporarily suspended.
4. The initial number of zoom levels to be shown in a Hierarchy Diagram (HID) can now be set to 7, the previous limit was 5. Additional warnings are raised for what might otherwise be extremely large HIDs if this option is used.
5. The current options for HID item attribute properties are now shown in the lists of properties currently selected for each item type.
6. Issues related to the definition of category codes, category code values and category recognition strings in languages requiring UTF-8 encoding, such as Cyrillic, Korean and Chinese, have been corrected.
7. Reading system alerts generated in large blocks could cause alerts to become corrupted. This has been fixed.
8. The project schema has been extended to allow a project to optionally define a set of pre-defined values to be used in the Group attribute of all types of item.
9. Support for meta data has been added into the project schema. Specifically, parts of the project schema can now have descriptions recorded against them to, for example, explain the purpose of attributes or attribute values.
10. A $BROWSER Command Directive has been added to automatically reference the user’s default web browser on both Windows and UNIX systems.

Cradle Toolset Changes

1. When creating siblings of an item, the original item’s attributes (categories and frames) can be optionally copied into the new item, or none of these attributes are copied.
2. Multi-value category codes are now supported throughout the Toolset.
3. Data definition bitfields can now be defined in models in the Implementation domain. These comprise values for new frames in data definitions (DD entries) which in turn can be reported as formatted message tables in the Document Publishertool output.

Cradle-API Changes

• The Cradle API has been extended to allow diagrams to be created and stored in the database through the API using either C/C++ or VB/VBA. There is a new Cradle API Reference manual that provides full explanations of all types of items in the database, including diagrams.

The Cradle API call to print a diagram now allows the page size and orientation of the diagram to be specified. The defaults are for portrait orientation on A4.

Cradle-MET (Metrics) Changes

• Multi-value category codes are now supported in sub-totals and sub-sub-totals in the results calculated by the Metrics tool.

Cradle-SYS (System Modelling) Changes

1. Nested symbols inside Software Architecture Diagrams (SADs) can now butt directly against the boundaries of their container symbols, such as processes and tasks, or objects and classes.
2. The use of name synchronisation could incorrectly mark items also being edited by the same user as being changed. This has been fixed.
3. When diagrams and specifications are updated to synchronise names, their last modification dates are now updated, and an entry is included in their edit history (if enabled).
4. When diagrams and specifications are saved, provide warning messages to the user if any items could not be updated to maintain name synchronisation, either because the user does not have RW access to such items, or they are locked.
5. The Diagram Editor’s Name Symbol and Rename Symbol dialogues now have a Save diagram checkbox. If selected, the diagram is saved when operations occur to ensure immediate name synchronisation. The checkbox is selected if name synchronisation is enabled. It is enabled by default in the 3SL as-supplied Cradle start-up files.
6. A new facility has been added whereby Cradle will display warnings if the user is about to perform an operation that could:
   • Cause a model to become disconnected
   • Not be completely performed
   • for example, because the user does not have RW access to all the items involved in the operation, or because one or more of these items is currently locked in the database. This facility can be enabled or disabled as a user preference. It is enabled by default in the 3SL-supplied Cradle start-up files. The new mechanism applies to a range of operations, including:
   • Reorder diagram
   • Renumber diagram
   • Delete diagram
   • Rename diagram specifications
   • Copy diagram
   • Delete symbols
   • Renumber symbol
   • Replace symbol
7. Multi-value categories are supported for all model diagrams, specifications and data definitions.

Cradle-DOC (Document Generation) Changes

1. The UI of the Document Publisher has been redesigned to improve its appearance and ease of use.
2. Document Publisher templates are now stored server-side in the definitions managed by the Cradle Database Server (CDS) in project database directories. Document templates can be stored with the same set of scopes as other types of definitions.
3. The Document Publisher can be invoked from the command line in a DOS shell. As a result, it can now be launched from a node in a project phase hierarchy to generate a specific document simply by clicking that phase hierarchy node.
4. Multi-value categories are supported in documents produced by the Document Publisher.

Cradle-WEBP (Web Publisher) Changes

1. Database items containing text in some Western European languages were not correctly generated in WEBP’s UTF-8 encoded web pages. This is now fixed.
2. Multi-value categories are supported in Web Publisher output.

Cradle-WEBA (Web Access) Changes

1. A new facility has been added to create a new cross reference from a selected item to a new item of a user-specified type.
2. Item and cross reference creation and last modified times are accessible in web UIs created with the Web Access facility.
3. Project phase nodes that query the database for items and show the items by expanding the project phase hierarchy tree are now supported in UIs created with Web Access.
4. Multi-value categories are supported through UIs created with Web Access.

Cradle-WRK (WorkBench) Changes

1. The old and new values of attributes shown in the Item Change History dialogue can now be selected, for example for copy and paste operations.
2. When an item is copied, the new item is automatically opened in a form.
3. When items are copied or deleted or hierarchies are created, queries are now not refreshed so as to save time. The items are added to the end of the list or are deleted.
4. When creating siblings of an item, the original item’s attributes (categories and frames) can be optionally copied into the new item, or none of these attributes are copied.
5. The new created time and last modified time attributes are accessible in all views and forms and are shown in all Status dialogues.
6. Multi-value categories are supported by WorkBench.