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Cradle from 3SL, the complete Model Based Systems Engineering Toolsuite, specialising in requirements management, requirements capture, model based systems engineering and for systems engineering software, support and consultancy, the logical choice: Cradle from 3SL.

May 2009 [Cradle 5.7]

Advance Notice of Cradle-6.0 Release

3SL is pleased to announce that we confidently expect to release the next major Cradle version, Cradle-6.0, imminently. We will provide full details of this new release in our July newsletter.

The main characteristics of Cradle-6.0 are:

Consolidation of functionality into fewer clients

  • New UI
  • New Help system
  • New functionality
  • Usability enhancements
  • Licensing changes
  • New platform support – including Windows Vista

Consolidation of Functionality

In Cradle-6.0, the Toolset and Menu have been removed. The effects of this are:

  1. All functionality in Toolset has been moved into the new WorkBench client, except for:
    • Document Editor (DCE)
    • Template Editor (TPE)
    • Document Printer (DPRT)

      w      hich have been removed, and:
    • Performance Modelling
    • Code Generation
    • Reverse Engineering

      which will be moved into WorkBench in a release after Cradle-6.0
  2. All Configuration Management facilities are now in WorkBench
  3. All modelling and Hierarchy Diagram facilities are now in WorkBench
  4. All functionality in the Menu has been moved into the Project Manager client:
    • Facilities to start and stop local and remote Cradle Database Servers (CDSs) and Cradle Web Servers (CWSs)
    • Facilities to generate reports of active users, projects and licence usage
    • Reports of current loading on all active CDSs
    • Creation, deletion and relocation of Cradle projects
  5. Installation is considerably easier, with no need for X servers or NutCracker ® on Windows and no special fonts or use of font servers on UNIX/Linux

New UI

The WorkBench UI has been changed at Cradle-6.0 to improve its usability and flexibility:

  1. The UI no longer has fixed query and item regions each containing multiple panes
  2. The UI can be split horizontally and/or vertically into a hierarchy of panes, each of which can contain any combination of queries and items in separate tabs
  3. Session handling supports these arbitrary UI layouts
  4. New Sidebar replaces the Master Tree, with individual tabs for the process hierarchy, database, query administration and context-specific operations (such as the diagram editing controls)
  5. A new progress indicator has been added into the Status Bar to give feedback when long operations are being performed

New Help System

All of the documentation in Cradle-6.0 has been completely re-written. This documentation is available both as manuals and as on-line, web-based help. The web-based help includes an index, a glossary and search facilities.

Exactly the same information is used to generate both forms of help information, so users can now get the same information from both sources.

New Functionality

Cradle-6.0 includes a wide range of new functionality, including:

  1. New Automatic scope queries and views that are automatically created and maintained from the contents of the project schema, so that queries and views are immediately available when new item types are defined and new attributes are added
  2. New Quick Access Bar to access these new queries
  3. Ability to reorder hierarchies of requirements (and other items) by drag-and-drop which also automatically updates their hierarchical numbers (of the form 1.2.3)
  4. New diagram editing functionality, using only 2 mouse buttons (not 3 as before), with PowerPoint style behaviour
  5. Larger diagram sizes of up to 4,096 symbols per diagram
  6. Multi-level undo of diagram editing facilities
  7. New reporting mechanism with new report formats including styles for titles, headings and sub-headings and tables
  8. Extensions to document generation facilities through Document Publisher
  9. A DDE interface has been added to provide some simple, external, controls over the WorkBench client, which are similar to the initial action command-line options available in WorkBench
  10. Extensions to c_io command line utility for diagram printing, -since and –until options, and improved log file contents
  11. New Windows installer, using the latest InstallShield ®

Usability Enhancements

Cradle-6.0 includes a wide range of usability enhancements, including:

  1. Open icon buttons inside Tree, Table and Document display styles
  2. Automatic variable sized fonts in Document display style so views have a document like appearance, with larger headings and sub-headings
  3. Close tab buttons on each query and item tab in each display pane
  4. Ability to generate dynamic reports from selected items
  5. Ability to print and check multiple selected diagrams and get status information on multiple selected items
  6. Extended Linked Items dialog with facilities to view linked items and cross references directly from the linked items list
  7. Direct loading/saving of data to/from each frame
  8. Maximise individual frames inside the UI for easier editing
  9. Support for mouse rollerwheel / mouse wheel
  10. Controllable UI font size (small, medium, large)
  11. Text is handled as paragraphs so text editing is considerably improved
  12. The External Command Interface has been moved into Project Setup and is no longer a set of per-user optional user preferences

Licensing Changes

In Cradle-5.7.0.2 and previous releases, the Toolset client consisted of a main UI that can be accessed without using any tool licences. Licences were only used when data was to be manipulated. In effect, the Toolset UI could be regarded as consisting of:

  • A basic shell that can be used without needing licence(s)
  • Tools and operations launched from this shell that do require licence(s)

In Cradle-6.0 the WorkBench UI fulfils the same role as the Toolset UI used to fulfil, that is, the WorkBench UI consists of:

  • A basic shell that can be used without needing licence(s)
  • Tools and operations launched from this shell that do require licence(s)
  • Users will not need any tool licences to start the WorkBench UI and login, but will need tool licence(s) to manipulate items through the WorkBench UI, in the same manner as was the case with the Toolset UI
  • The Cradle-WRK (WorkBench) licence will be renamed the Cradle-REQ (Requirements Management) licence

So, the licences in a Cradle-6.0 system can be zero or more of each of the following:

  • Cradle-REQ, Requirements Management
  • Cradle-SYS, Systems Modelling (functional, UML, data and architecture notations)
  • Cradle-PERF, Performance Modelling
  • Cradle-WEBA, Web Access (including user-defined web UIs)
  • Cradle-WEBP, Web Publisher
  • Cradle-DOC, Document Generation
  • Cradle-MET, Metrics

Existing customers’ licences will be automatically changed by 3SL when we issue Security Codes for Cradle-6.0. In the past, we had supplied free-of-charge Cradle-REQ licences so that information created in the WorkBench UI (using the Cradle-WRK licence) could be viewed and edited through the Toolset UI (using the free Cradle-REQ licence). Now that the Toolset has been removed, there is no need for the free-of-charge Cradle-REQ licences, and they will be withdrawn.

The overall effect of the changes to the Cradle-6.0 licensing are:

  1. You will not lose any licences that you have already purchased
  2. Your Cradle-WRK licences will become Cradle-REQ licences
  3. Any Cradle-REQ licences that you had purchased will remain as Cradle-REQ licences
  4. Any free-of-charge Cradle-REQ licence that 3SL may have provided will be removed

So, for example:

A customer has purchased 2 Cradle-REQ licences, 4 Cradle-WRK licences and 2 Cradle-DOC licences. In Cradle-6.0, their system will contain 6 Cradle-REQ licences and 2 Cradle-DOC licences.

A customer has purchased 3 Cradle-WRK licences and 3SL supplied a Cradle-REQ licence free-of-charge. In Cradle-6.0, their system will contain 3 Cradle-REQ licences.

Platform Support

At Cradle-6.0 3SL has discontinued support for Microsoft Office 2000, and we have introduced support for:

  • Windows Vista SP1
  • Windows Server 2008 R1

All other platforms and Office versions are unchanged from previous releases.

So, the platforms supported by Cradle-6.0 are:

  • HP HP-UX 11.0 or later for PA-RISC
  • IBM AIX 5.1 or later for PowerPC
  • Linux, any with a version 2.4 or later kernel, including SuSE, Debian, RedHat, Ubuntu
  • Sun Solaris 8 ((Solaris 2.8, SunOS 5.8) or later for Sparc
  • Windows 2000 SP4
  • Windows XP SP2
  • Windows 2003 SP2
  • Windows Server 2003 R2
  • Windows Vista SP1
  • Windows Server 2008 R1

The versions of Microsoft Office supported by Cradle-6.0 are:

  • Office XP SP3
  • Office 2003 SP3
  • Office 2007 SP1

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[Copyright © 3SL 2010 | Last Updated: Sat Jul 31st, 2010 ]