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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.

October 2009 [Cradle 6.0]

Cradle-6.0 Release

3SL is pleased to announce that we released Cradle-6.0 in July 2009. This is the latest new release of our requirements management and systems engineering environment and is a major enhancement from previous releases. Cradle-6.0 is a full product release, and is accompanied by completely written documentation and related materials.

The Cradle-6.0 release provides many significant enhancements to the original Cradle-5.7 release and fixes several bugs. For a detailed list of all enhancements and bug fixes that is also grouped by Cradle module, please consult:

  • The Cradle-6.0 Release Notes
  • The What’s New document in the Help menus of the Cradle clients

The major elements of the Cradle-6.0 release are:

  1. Consolidation of functionality into fewer clients
  2. New UI
  3. New Help system with completely re-written documentation and manuals
  4. New functionality, particularly reordering in item hierarchies and web UI extensions
  5. Usability enhancements
  6. Licensing changes
  7. New platform support – including Windows Vista

A presentation with the filename rr00809-Cradle60_NewFeatures.ppt is available from the Documents section of the Downloads area in our website that describes the new features available in Cradle-6.0.

Database Compatibility

Cradle-6.0 has a new format for its project databases. If you upgrade to Cradle-6.0 you must convert all your project databases to the new format. A converter is supplied with the release that will perform the conversions for you. The Cradle-6.0 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 project 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:

  • Export data from the databases in the previous release
  • Install the new release
  • Create new projects in the new release
  • Import the data from the export files into the new databases

If you are updating to Cradle-6.0 from Cradle-5.2, or any later version, then you can use either approach. That is, you can either convert Cradle-5.2 (or later) databases to Cradle-6.0 or you can export from Cradle-5.2 (or later) and import into Cradle-6.0. We recommend that you use the conversion approach, but the choice is yours.

However, if you are updating to Cradle-6.0 from Cradle-5.1 (or one of its updates) or an earlier release then you must read the next section very carefully.

Please be advised that in Cradle-6.0 we have 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-6.0, then these text manipulations will not occur. You may therefore find a difference between a database conversion and an export followed by an import.

We always recommend using the database converters that are supplied with Cradle.

Upgrading from Cradle-5.1 or Earlier Releases

This section ONLY applies to those customers who are upgrading to Cradle-6.0 directly from Cradle-5.1 (or one of its updates) or from an earlier version.

If you have not used change histories (edit histories) in the earlier version of Cradle, then you can still use the export-and-import approach to the upgrade to Cradle-6.0described in the previous section, if you wish.

However, if you have used change histories (edit histories) in Cradle-5.1 (or any of its updates) then you must use the converter to upgrade to Cradle-6.0.

At Cradle-5.2 we changed the way change histories (edit histories) are stored. Prior to version 5.2, they were stored in the project Configuration Log used in the Cradle Configuration Management System (CMS). From version 5.2 they are stored in CHANGE HISTORY frames in the items in the database. Therefore, simply exporting and importing will not convert the change history information from the Configuration Log to CHANGE HISTORY frames, and so if you simply export from Cradle-5.1 and import into Cradle-6.0, then you will lose your change history information when viewed through Cradle-6.0.

Fonts

In Cradle-6.0, the Toolset client has been completely removed. This means that:

  • On Windows, there is no need for NutCracker and no need for an X server (such as XVision or Cygwin that 3SL used to supply with Cradle releases)
  • On Windows, there is no need for any special fonts to be installed in an X server
  • On Linux and UNIX there are now no longer any special Cradle fonts. All Cradle clients on Linux and UNIX are still X clients (everything uses an X server on Linux and UNIX systems), but now Cradle clients use pre-existing fonts that will already be installed in the font server.

So in summary Cradle is no longer supplied with any fonts for any platform.

Must I Install Cradle-6.0?

Cradle-6.0 has many enhancements and bug fixes from Cradle-5.7. It is a very substantial improvement over Cradle-5.7.

We would like you to use Cradle-6.0 in preference to Cradle-5.7 or any earlier version. That is why we have released it!

If you are currently using Cradle-5.7, there is no immediate need to upgrade to Cradle-6.0. 3SL will continue to support Cradle-5.7 until after the next major version of Cradle is released.

However, if you are using Cradle-5.5.1, or an earlier release, then we urge you to upgrade to Cradle-6.0 because:

  • You will see some dramatic extensions and improvements
  • 3SL no longer supports these releases

Mixing Cradle-6.0 and Earlier Releases

You cannot mix Cradle-6.0 with any earlier release of Cradle. This means that if you decide to install Cradle-6.0 anywhere, then you must install it everywhere.

Specifically:

  • Cradle-6.0 servers will not respond to Cradle-5.7 or earlier clients
  • Cradle-6.0 clients will not be serviced by Cradle-5.7 or earlier servers

These incompatibilities are failsafe. That is, if you should accidentally fail to upgrade a client to Cradle-6.0, then starting that client will not adversely effect the operation of Cradle-6.0, as the Cradle-6.0 servers will ignore connection attempts from clients of any previous version.

Downloading Cradle-6.0

All Cradle-6.0 download files for Windows and UNIX were added to our website and to our mirror site on 29 th June 2009.

For Windows, the file to download is: Cradle60_Setup.exe

Note that Cradle-6.0 only supports 32-bit Windows platforms. Also note that Cradle-6.0 is the first version of Cradle to support Windows Vista.

For UNIX, your must download the boot and core.Z filesets, and also download the fileset that contains the executable files for your architecture:

  • hppa.Z for HP HP-UX 11.0 or later on PA-RISC
  • ibm5.Z for IBM AIX 5.1 or later on PowerPC
  • linux-ia32.Z for all 32-bit compatible versions and types of Linux
  • sparcs2.Z for Sun Solaris 2.8 or later on Sparc
  • win32pc.Z for 32-bit Windows executables hosted on a UNIX server

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.