Category ' Newsletters '

8th November 20239th November 2023

November Newsletter 2023

Welcome to the November 2023 newsletter from 3SL!

This newsletter contains a mixture of news and technical information about us, and our requirements management and systems engineering tool “Cradle”. We would especially like to welcome everyone who has purchased Cradle in the past month and those who are currently evaluating Cradle for their projects and processes.

We hope that 3SL and Cradle can deliver real and measurable benefits that help you to improve the information flow within, the quality and timeliness of, and the traceability, compliance and governance for, all of your current and future projects.

If you have any questions about your use of Cradle, please do not hesitate to contact 3SL Support.

Cradle Public Training Courses 2024

3SL have provided a number of Cradle public training courses in 2023. We are currently working on our 2024 training course calendar. Once this is available we will share this with you.

We still have courses available in 2023, please see our website for further information.

Critical Software and Software Bill of Material (SBOM)

The contract opportunities issued by the US Government and many US companies now include a requirement that suppliers provide a Software Bill of Material (SBOM) for all critical software – as defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) – that would be delivered as part of any contract fulfilment of that opportunity. This requirement is pursuant to executive order 14028 issued by the Biden administration in the US.

3SL can advise that Cradle does not fall within the definition of critical software as defined by NIST. The NIST definition and guidance can be found here.

Remember, Remember

There’s quite a bit to remember this month whether it’s the failed plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament, or the war fallen.

“Remember, remember, the fifth of November, Gunpowder Treason and Plot!” Might be a good way to cement a date in your mind we humans tend to like rhymes, songs, and mnemonics to help our brains ‘visualise’ an otherwise abstract date or fact. However, trying to remember what’s needed and when on a large project is really quite difficult. Especially when dates are not fixed.

query on a date in a category with relative offset — Relative Date Query

Cradle provides several ways to track changes in your project. One of these is to query on relative dates.

For example an item representing a ‘test’ that needs to be run could be set with a category of type date. You could then query on ‘tests‘ that are due to occur (or should have occurred) before the end of next week. It is also possible to query on a range, say beginning of this month and end of next week.

For items that are part of a work breakdown structure linked to a plan, there are some built-in ranges which can be accessed in the Progress tab in the Query Details dialog. For example, you can find all activities / tasks that are underway, those that are due to complete soon, or those that should have already completed. These provide a planning view of where your project stands.

Celebrations

We hope all our customers, suppliers and staff that celebrate Dewali, All Hallows Eve and All Saints day or remembered the defeating of the Gunpowder plot have a happy and safe celebration.

3SL join with our customers, friends and suppliers, on this armistice day, to take a moment to remember those who have fallen fighting for their countries.

Source Document Analyses

Cradle’s Document Loader tool can be used to parse source documents and capture them into a hierarchy of items, each corresponding to one of the sections, subsections, paragraphs, tables, table rows, table cells in the document. The structure of this hierarchy mirrors the structure of the document. Each item in the hierarchy is linked to its origin in a copy of the source document that is cached in the database. This allows Cradle to perform a variety of operations on source documents:

Capture their contents into items that are typically the needs or user requirements to which other items are linked
Coverage analysis, to show which parts of the document have been captured
Use analysis, to show how parts of the document have been used in the database
Integrity analysis, to confirm that the document has been parsed into multiple items each of which is identical to the original document, or (depending on the process) has been modified only as agreed
Compare versions of source documents to find differences and see which database items were impacted by these differences
Compare a potential new version of a source document against the latest version that has previously been loaded to find the changes and assess the impact of such changes on the database as a means to decide if the new document version will be accepted

Mapping Tables When Capturing Documents

Some source documents use tables for each piece of information. For example, each requirement or test case is contained in its own table and, therefore, a document with 500 requirements will have 500 tables.

When loading such documents, you define a mapping for the first of these tables. In this mapping you specify which cells (each a row and column) will have its contents loaded, and the attribute of the Cradle item that will receive that data. You can then apply this mapping to all other tables in the document with the same structure, and then proceed to capture the document using all of these table mappings.

We have seen a problem whereby Document Loader would fail to map multiple tables. This problem only occurred with one specific document, and only when that document was being processed on a Windows Server 2019 + Office 2016 platform. Any other combination of O/S and Office worked as expected.

We are pleased to advise that a recent Microsoft Update to Office has corrected this problem. Therefore, please ensure that if you are using Office 2016 that you use Version 2310 Build 16924.20124.

For more information about How to Set Table Mappings click here.

Latest Updates

The latest technical and related topics in our blog are:

Follow these links to see the latest blog updates and then use the blog’s search to find other topics of interest! With over 500 posts in the blog, we are sure that you will find lots to interest you in the details of Cradle and 3SL!

We would also like to thank all attendees on our Risk Management course which we provided in October.

Social Media

Supported #WorldMentalHealthDay
Congratulated @SercoGroup on winning the contract for DWP Functional Assessment Services
Supported #WorldMenopauseDay
Congratulated @Medtronic on ranking #17 on @3BLnews’s 100 Best Corporate Citizens list – their highest ranking yet!
Congratulated @Roche on winning the Center of Excellence Innovation award
Discussed the following topics:

Still to Come this Month

Test Execution course – November 21st to 22nd

This course is a 1 day course split over 2 half days. It provides the following modules:

Introduction to Test Execution
Setting up Supporting Item Types
Test Planning
Test Execution and Recording

Your Highlights

If you have any company news or achievements that you would like 3SL to share in any of our newsletters then please let us know.

13th October 202313th October 2023

October Newsletter 2023

Welcome to the October 2023 newsletter from 3SL!

If you have any questions about your use of Cradle, please do not hesitate to contact 3SL Support.

Controlling PDUIDs in Import and Export

The primary method of moving data into or out of Cradle databases is import/export. Regardless of the form of the data files used, there are some basic characteristics of import operations that affect the handling of PDUIDs and which can be controlled by the user when importing. These choices can be saved with other import options in an import format file. Such formats can be used for later imports, and specified for command-line based imports using the c_io utility. Using import format files is recommended as it ensures consistency between imports.

Further Details

For further details on this part 4 of a description of PDUIDs, please see the full blog entry here.

Latest Updates

The latest technical and related topics in our blog are:

We would also like to thank all attendees on our Document Publisher course which we provided in September.

Halloween

Halloween is a celebration observed in many countries on 31st October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Saints’ Day. It begins the observance of Allhallowtide, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed.

Spirits, Cauldrons, Witches and Jack-O-Lanterns

The masses were hungry, they needed a solution. The Requirements Master toiled over her cauldron. Into the mix she added a freshly cut bunch of requirements, a handful of ideas and a sackful of luck. The brew steamed for day and night, and as members of her family walked by they threw in their ha’p’orth of comments.

The requirements soon stewed and disintegrated, but all could see the ideas floating to the top.

The swirling liquor produced a heady vapour, caught by the nostrils of the management team. They liked what they smelled and believed the Requirements Master was doing just fine.

When the soup was dished up to the masses, the flavour was odd, and it didn’t satisfy their hunger. They felt weakened and sad, some even passed over to another project. “A curse has been placed upon this town”, they cried, “the Requirements Master is a Witch!” The town’s folk lit lanterns to guide the lost souls home to the land of abandoned engineering.

Well, that’s certainly one way to do design and engineering! Whilst it is often the case that many ideas are ‘thrown into the melting pot’, it should be used as a tool elicit idea, and not to ‘hopefully solve’ the problem. A more complex mix isn’t necessarily successful. As the tale told, losing sight of the requirements is a dangerous thing. Managing the project by a whiff of success is unlikely to be accurate.

So, don’t fall under the spell of those that don’t know how to engineer, and let Cradle light your way!

Social Media

Congratulated @hensoldt on donating €6,000 to the children’s intensive #care program #Bärenfamilie.
We also congratulated @WeAreHII after the first Flight III Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer Jack H Lucas departed HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding division
Discussed the following topics:

Still to Come this Month

Risk Management course – October 24th to 25th

This course is a 1 day course split over 2 half days. It provides the following modules:

Introduction to Risk Management
Setting up a Risk Item Type
Managing Risks
Reporting Risks
Example Usage Demo

Your Highlights

If you have any company news or achievements that you would like 3SL to share in any of our newsletters then please let us know.

1st September 2023

September Newsletter 2023

Welcome to the September 2023 newsletter from 3SL!

If you have any questions about your use of Cradle, please do not hesitate to contact 3SL Support.

Latest Updates

The latest technical and related topics in our blog are:

We would also like to thank all attendees on the Requirements Management course that we held in August.

Using PDUIDs

This section explains how PDUIDs can be used in Cradle.

Opening Items

You can open an item by simply specifying its PDUID. You do not need to specify the type of the item using the Item Type Chooser dialogs in the WorkBench and web UIs. For items in models, you do not need to choose the correct domain and then locate the model inside that domain.

You simply specify the PDUID:

3SL Cradle PDUID Open Item by PDUID — Open Item by PDUID

The latest instance of the item will be opened.

Queries

You can find items based on their PDUIDs, or components of the PDUIDs, in addition to any other criteria that you may have set inside the query. Select the PUIDs tab in the Query Details dialog:

The selection of items by PDUID will return all instances that you can access RO or RW.

Further Details

For further details on this description of PDUIDs, please see the full blog entry here.

Testimonial

Our Support Team received a wonderful testimonial from one of our customers:

“The support team does an amazing job. Is the better support I ever have in a Software. It was very important decision factor to use CRADLE in the company. “

We try to deliver unrivalled service to all of our customers. If you have been especially pleased, or disappointed, with our support, then let us know!

Social Media

We celebrated #WorldWideWebDay
#Cytovale announced they have partnered with a leading health system (Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System) to improve sepsis care for their patients

Still to Come this Month

Document Publisher course – September 18th to 21st

This course is a 2 day course split over 4 half days. It provides the following modules:

Introduction to Document Publisher
Designing a Template
Navigating the Interface
Tags and Hierarchies
Specification Document
Verification Document
Item Lists
Draft and Formal Documents

Your Highlights

If you have any company news or achievements that you would like 3SL to share in any of our newsletters then please let us know.

2nd August 2023

August Newsletter 2023

Welcome to the August 2023 newsletter from 3SL!

If you have any questions about your use of Cradle, please do not hesitate to contact 3SL Support.

Latest Updates

The latest technical and related topics in our blog are:

We would also like to thank all attendees on both our Project Administration course and Cradle Introduction course which we provided in July.

Displaying PDUIDs and their Components

Here we explain how to view PDUIDs and their components.

Viewing PDUIDs

You can show PDUIDs and their parts anywhere that you can show any other item attributes, especially in views and forms. Use views to control how the results of queries will be shown. You use forms to show single items. In both cases, you decide which of the items’ attributes to show. You can show either PDUIDs or any of their parts. All of these values will be displayed read-only.

Views

A view specifies which of an item’s attributes will be shown, and the order and position of the values of these attributes.

Display Styles

You can display a view in one of four display styles:

List	:	Lists show each item in a row of read-only text. Lists cannot contain colour, images or linked items. You use a list to show the maximum number of items on screen at the same time.
Table	:	Each item is shown in one or more *rows, each of one or more columns, which creates a grid* of display *cells. Each of these cells can contain text or graphics. You can specify colour and text styles for the cells. The cells also allow linked items to be shown. Some cells are editable. You can also create display menus of user-defined commands. Table* style is the most common display style.
Document	:	This is the same as Table style except that row and column borders are not shown and different font sizes are used to display the first row of each item. The size of the text is based on the identity or other alphanumeric attribute, so that the effect is similar to the headings and subheadings of text in a document.
Tree	:	Each item is displayed as a node in a tree and a single row of values similar to List style. You can control the format of the tree nodes by a separate view. These tree nodes can be expanded and collapsed to show or hide sets of linked items.

Views are Tables

Most views have one row of cells, each containing one of the item’s attributes. So if a query returns 200 items, then the view will contain 200 rows, one per item. Items can be shown over more than one row. For example, if the same query is displayed with a view that uses 3 rows to show each item, then the result will be a table with 600 rows of the form:

3SL Cradle, items as rows in a table in a view — Items as Table Rows in a View

View Cells

Each cell in a view can contain fixed text, an attribute, linked items, or several attributes combined into a single value with some optional separating characters.

PDUIDs in Views

All of the components of PDUIDs are available to be shown in cells in a view.

Further Details

To continue reading, please see the full blog entry here.

Joscar

We are pleased to announce that following the submission of our renewal, our compliance information has now been published for buying organisations using JOSCAR (the Joint Supply Chain Accreditation Register).

JOSCAR

Social Media

We celebrated #TestimonialTuesday by sharing some of the wonderful feedback received from our customers
We wished our American friends, colleagues and customers a Happy #independenceday2023
We wished the NHS a Happy 75th birthday
An update to our Cradle Overview presentation was published
Our customer #coolLED were at #mmc2023 where you could see their systems in action
It was a busy month for #KBRincorproated. We congratulated them as they were named Newsweek’s America Greatest Workplace 2023. They attended the 20th International Conference & Exhibition on Liquefield Natural Gas. They also helped raise more than $14000 for Soldier On.
Congratulated #WeAreHII on being awarded a contract to continue supporting the National Geospatial Agency’s IT enterprise cloud migration
#MirionHQ were at the 2023 Health Physics Society Meeting where you could visit booth 404 to learn about their comprehensive solutions.
Congratulated #NewportNewsShipbuilding on winning a contract to support maintenance of nuclear powered aircraft carriers in San Diego.

Still to Come this Month

Requirements Management course – 21st to 24th August

This course is a 2 day course split over 4 half days. It provides the following modules:

Introduction to Cradle
Cradle Training Environment
Document Loader Introduction
Office Tools Introduction
Engineering Data
Hierarchies in Cradle
Traceability
Customising WorkBench
Configuration Management
WorkBench Output
Document Publisher Output
Customising your Environment
Tool Support

Your Highlights

If you have any company news or achievements that you would like 3SL to share in any of our newsletters then please let us know.

13th July 20231st November 2023

July Newsletter 2023

Welcome to the July 2023 newsletter from 3SL!

If you have any questions about your use of Cradle, please do not hesitate to contact 3SL Support.

PDUIDs

When we work with information, we need a way to distinguish each piece of information from all other pieces of information so we can be sure we have found what we were searching for. We do this by marking each piece of information in a unique way.

For information in databases, the markings are unique values called keys or identities. A piece of information can have multiple identities, each for a different purpose. For example, although a company’s payroll system is likely to identify each person by a unique Employee ID, each person’s details will also include their governmental tax ID (such as a National Insurance number, a Unique Taxpayer Reference, a Sozialversicherungsnummer or a Social Security Number). This tax ID will also be unique and so could also be used as an identity for that person’s information.

Cradle has two forms of identity, item identities and Project Database Unique IDs (PDUIDs).

We will publish a series of blog posts about PDUIDs, describing what they are, how to view them, how to use them, and how PDUIDs can be managed when you import information into your databases.

Item Identities

There are several basic item types in Cradle. Each basic item type uses a different combination of attributes to create a unique Item ID for items of that type:

An item is identified by this Item ID and a unique Instance ID, typically a version and draft.

PDUID Structure

Project Database Unique IDs (PDUIDs) are a single, consistent, numbering system for all database information. Each PDUID is a 26 character string that contains a Database ID to identify a Cradle system, a Project ID to identify a project database and a Unique ID:

A PDUID references all instances of an item. Therefore the combination of a PDUID and an Instance ID (a version and draft) will identify a specific item. So, this is an alternative to the Item ID and Instance ID and has the advantage of being consistent and a single numbering sequence for all types of item.

Further Details

For further details in this part 1 of a description of PDUIDs, please see the full blog entry here.

Remote Databases

A Cradle system can contain any number of databases. For the best performance, we recommend that databases are stored on disks connected to the machine that runs your Cradle Database Server (CDS). But, this may not be possible.

For example:

The local system may not have enough disk space available
The information in the database may be classified and must be stored separately

Here each database will be stored on a remote filesystem that must be referenced by a pathname so the CDS can work with it.

Further Details

For further details of remote databases, please see the full blog entry here.

Over Half Way Through the Year

It’s true; the 2nd July marked the halfway point of the calendar year. That went fast didn’t it?

It feels like we only just celebrated the New Year and now we are six months away from doing it all over again.

At this time of year, it is good to reflect on what’s already passed and what is to come this year. Here are some ways that might help if you are looking to refocus and recharge over the summer months.

Check in on Team Goals

How are the goals the team set at the beginning of the year going?
When was the last time your team reviewed them?

Now is a great time to reflect on any progress. Is your team on track? Is everybody on the same page?

Whatever the progress so far this year, there will be lessons to be learnt from it. It’s time to put an action plan in place for the remainder of the year. Now is a good time to get the team goals back on track:

Ask who do you need to help achieve those goals?
What’s the best way to communicate with them?
Is there an alternative way to achieve them?

Communication

Summer can be especially busy; school summer holidays, weekly events, fewer people in the office, and various demands can bring stress to everyone.

With all these additional activities going on, it’s easy for people to get distracted, lost and even burnt out.

Now is a great time to contact your team, employees and other connections. It can be as simple as a chat over a cup of coffee, a walk and talk or a business/working lunch. This will allow you to connect in a more casual way, which in turn, can help strengthen the link between you and your team.

Help your Team Avoid a Summer Decline

It’s no surprise that productivity can fall off a cliff when the sun comes out! Thoughts of ice cream, beer gardens and future holidays can lead our minds to wander off and our focus can end up in the bin.

Now is a good time to prepare your team and business to avoid any slump.

Congratulate your team on their efforts so far this year. One way to keep the momentum going is to set small achievable goals, something that can be done within a week to a month can help. As you complete and reach each one, the team will get a boost.

Having weekly/monthly meetings can allow the team to see those goals that have been achieved. Using metrics, dashboards and graphs can help your team see the progress made each week, month, year or more.

This progress will give reasons to celebrate and that can only be a good thing!

Remember: the team working together will make the dream work!

Feedback

We continue to receive positive feedback from our customers. We really appreciate ALL feedback, as this helps us to assess and improve both the products and services we provide.

In June, we provided a Cradle training course to one of our customers in Australia. They kindly sent the following feedback:

“Extremely informative classes. We are very appreciative of the customised content tailored for our envisaged use of the tool”

Independence Day (4th July)

4th July was a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the Declaration of Independence which was ratified by the Second Continental Congress on July 4th 1776, establishing the United States of America.

Social Media

We commemorated #DDay – 79 years ago. “We will remember them“:

Some of our customers, both old and new, attended various shows/exhibitions etc, e.g.:

@ZFGroup at AutoTech Detroit
@the_MTC_org at Smart Factory Expo
@Alstom at @VivaTech
@MirionHQ at TRTR Research and Training Reactors Conference

@SercoGroup announced they have been awarded nine contracts to help the #IRIDE space programme. This programme is led by the Italian government and implemented by the European Space Agency. This is one of the most amibitous Earth Observation programmes in Europe.

With electric vehicles taking over the roads, our customer @Enphase talked about EV chargers.

Looking Back

Last month we discussed:

We would also like to thank all attendees on our Configuration Management course which we provided in June.

Still to Come this Month

Project Administration Course – July 18th to 19th
Cradle Introduction Course – July 25th to 26th

Your Highlights!

If you have any company news or achievements that you would like 3SL to share in any of our newsletters then please let us know.

14th June 202314th June 2023

June Newsletter 2023

Welcome to the June 2023 newsletter from 3SL!

If you have any questions about your use of Cradle, please do not hesitate to contact 3SL Support.

Configuration Management

All projects need configuration management, even if only to create protected copies of the items being worked on in one or more baselines. Cradle Configuration Management System (CMS) is a flexible, customisable framework. You can use the CMS to adapt Cradle to your process and the needs of your project.

The CMS contains a variety of features and capabilities. You can use these to configure the CMS to be a simple change manager. You can also configure the CMS to be extremely rigorous in all stages in the evolution of your project information from initial creation through to formal acceptance.

Summary

The CMS provides four basic mechanisms:

The scope and effect of these mechanisms are controlled by privileges and also by workflows.

Simple Process

A simple CM process is typically a series of stages that items will pass through on their way to a baseline. There are typically no formal reviews in this sequence.

The steps to create a simple process are:

Decide on the stages in your process and what each stage means
Create a category code with these stages as its possible values
Assign this category code to the item type(s) that are to follow the process
Create a workflow that references your category code and define the sequence of stages, each step in the workflow will set items’ status to be one of the values in your category code
Assign the workflow to the item type(s)

It is easy to use this workflow. You and your colleagues create items. You change items and link them to other items in the database. At the end of each step, you use the Advance operation to move the items to the next step in the workflow. When items reach the stage of being baselined, someone will need to open a baseline before you can Advance items into it. When everything has been moved into the baseline, it can be closed.

Review Process

A more complex workflow can be for a process that includes reviews. Any number of the steps in a workflow can be a review. You can specify the characteristics of each review. These include:

Which users will be involved in the review?
How many of these users must contribute to the review?
How will an approve result be determined from reviewers’ responses?
How will a reject result be determined from reviewers’ responses?
What actions are to be performed for items that are rejected by the review?
What actions are to be performed for items that are approved by the review?
Is the rework mechanism to be used and if so, how?

The process to implement a review process is the same as for a simple process except that some of the workflow steps require the configuration of reviews.

Managing Changes to Items

You can review items into project baselines and make formal changes to these items. Use of the CMS is therefore fundamentally about progressing items through one or more reviews into baselines, and then subsequently making formal changes to these items, which culminate in new versions of the changed items appearing in new baselines.

The CMS is not concerned with the details of how changes to items occur. It is not concerned with whether 1 or N edits have occurred to effect a change to an item. It is not concerned with recording the before and after values of the attributes that are affected by each edit, but is simply concerned with the high-level process of agreeing that a change is needed (a change request), initiating consequential changes to one or more items (managed in one or more change tasks), recording the formal reviews of the changed items, and ultimately storing the amended items in a new baseline.

Audit Trail / Configuration Log

For many projects, the automatically and transparently recorded audit trail, and the formalism of the use of change requests (CHRs), change tasks (CHTs), formal reviews and formal baselines, is sufficient. For other projects, more detailed records are required.

Public Training

3SL are running a public CM course in June. If you want to learn more about CM in Cradle, book your place now.

PDUIDs

Project Database Unique IDs are an alternate method for identifying items in a Cradle database. PDUIDs are particularly useful for users of the Cradle Application Programming Interface (API) and Web Services Interface (WSI) because they have the same format for all types of information.

We will provide a series of short articles on PDUIDs over the coming weeks. We hope that these will be helpful.

Integrity of 3SL’s SSL Certificates

All of 3SL’s web-based services use HTTPS, the secure form of HTTP. Wherever possible, all of our Internet-based services also use secure protocols. So this means we need a certificate to confirm our identity that your web browser and other tools check when you visit our website and other services.

We have a certificate for:

*.threesl.com

This includes our website, mail server, shared SaaS and other portals. Certificates have a fixed lifespan and so on 9th June we refreshed our certificate. Our current certificate is issued by Sectigo RSA Domain Validation Secure Server CA. It is valid until 23:59:59 UTC Tuesday, 9th July 2024.

You can check the integrity of a website certificate using Qualys here. You can check 3SL’s website here. Our site is rated A+:

SSL Certificates — Qualys report for 3SL

The King’s Official Birthday (17th June 2023)

Celebrations of the monarch’s official birthday are held in June across the Commonwealth, including the Trooping of the Colour. The date not necessarily correspond to the date of the monarch’s actual birth.

The sovereign’s birthday was first officially marked in the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1748, for King George II. Since then the date of the king or queen’s birthday has been determined by:

Royal proclamations issued by the sovereign or viceroy, or
Statute laws passed by the local parliament

We will individually mark the King’s birthday and invite others to do so in respect to the Crown.

Social Media

We congratulated @WeAreHII on their record first quarter 2023 revenues and @Siemens on their outstanding performance.

We also congratulated @KBRincorporated on the award of the contract by Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd. This is to implement supercritical solvent deasphalting technology.

Our customer @MIRAEngineering were exhibiting at the Future Mobility Asia Exhibition & Summit. Did you visit stand ME18?

Looking Back

Last month we discussed:

Calculations in Cradle

We would also like to thank all attendees on our Test Execution course which we provided in May.

Still to Come this Month

Configuration Management Course – June 20th to 21st

Your Highlights!

If you have any company news or achievements that you would like 3SL to share in any of our newsletters then please let us know.

5th May 20234th August 2023

May Newsletter 2023

Welcome to the May 2023 newsletter from 3SL!

If you have any questions about your use of Cradle, please do not hesitate to contact 3SL Support.

3SL SaaS

Deploying Cradle as SaaS (software as a service) is becoming an increasingly attractive option for many organisations. Using SaaS greatly simplifies the deployment of Cradle as there is nothing that you, or your corporate IT, need to do.

We ask for the names of the people who will use Cradle, and the IP addresses from where they will access Cradle, and then we do the rest.

You and your colleagues get access to the latest Cradle, backed by our internationally renown technical support, with no need to be concerned about IT services, data integrity, backups or any of the other details that can be a burden for an in-house installation.

For more information, please look here. If you would like to talk to us about SaaS deployments of Cradle, please click here.

Baselines and Snapshots

Cradle provides two mechanisms to protect sets of information and provide read-only access to information as it was in the past.

Baselines

Baselines is the mechanism in Cradle’s Configuration Management System (CMS) to protect information from changes. Each baseline is a named repository for the state of a project at a specific point in time. A succession of baselines can be created over the life of a project, each containing more and more information as the project completes its sprints, iterations or phases.

Items can be registered into an open baseline and are given a version number: 01, 02, 03 … The version number assigned to each item is either 01 if there are no baselined instances of that item, or it is 1 higher than the highest version already in the database.

When the baseline is closed:

Unchanged items from the previous baseline migrate into (become a part of) the new baseline
A copy of all current links (cross references) is saved with the baseline
A list of the latest items and their versions is saved for the baseline

Snapshots

A snapshot is a copy of all the information in a database. Its contents can be viewed, read-only, at any time in the future. A succession of snapshots can be created over the life of a project. In effect, a snapshot is simply an online backup, a copy of a database.

A snapshot is a copy of an entire database. When a snapshot is created, everything in a database, including all of its baselines and definitions (excluding Personal and System scope) are copied into a separate area. Every snapshot is separate from all other snapshots and is separate from the live database.

Creating a snapshot is similar to making a backup copy of the database, except that this backup is directly accessible from within Cradle.

Comparison

#	Characteristic	Baseline	Snapshot
1	Summary	Creates a new approved set of items and links in a database that can be viewed RO.	Copies an entire database and related definitions to create a new database that can be viewed RO.
2	User Benefit	RO view of previous baseline that can be used for queries, view data, run metrics, publish reports or documents	RO view of everything in the database as it was in the past, for queries, view data, run metrics, publish reports or documents
3	Additional Items	None	None
4	Additional links	Duplicates all current links	None
5	Database Size	Adds some items and copies all links	None
6	Disk Usage	Small to medium increase	Medium to large increase

For more details, please see our blog post here.

Circus Starr

3SL are proud to announce that we are supporting Circus Starr!

The community interest circus company are dedicated to making a difference to the lives of vulnerable and disadvantaged children in Barrow-in-Furness and across England through the magical art of circus. We are pleased to support our community, and this accessible and inclusive event is such a worthy cause.

To find out more about how you can support the circus with a purpose visit www.circus-starr.org.uk or call +44 (0) 1260 288690.

The Coronation of King Charles III

Many people across the country and the Commonwealth will be celebrating the Coronation of His Majesty The King and Her Majesty the Queen Consort over a weekend of special events on 6th to 8th May 2023.

International Nurses Day

Every year International Nurses Day is celebrated on 12 May to commemorate the anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birthday. This day also celebrates the contribution done by nurses to society around the world. On this day the International Council of Nurses organisation produces an International Nurses kit to educate and assist health workers globally with a different theme every year.

"Nurse" Photo by Laura James from Pexels — Nurse

World Multiple Sclerosis Day

On 30th May it is World Multiple Sclerosis Day. World MS day takes place on 30th May every year. Share stories, raise awareness and campaign with everyone affected by MS.

Social Media

We congratulated our customer ZF Group on the opening of their West Coast Mobility Hub which is a cutting edge facility dedicated to shaping the future of mobility.

Borg Warner were presenting how H2-ICE enables fast and efficient transportation at the World Hydrogen 2023 Summit & Exhibition.

Siemens Mobility demonstrated how their pioneering Vectron Dual Mode locomotives combined advantages of full featured diesel locomotive with those of electric ones.

We congratulated Horiba on obtaining UKAS accreditation against ISO17021-1.

Roche confirmed that the US FDA had granted approval to their new combination treatment for certain types of previously untreated diffuse large B cell lymphoma. This makes it the first therapy in nearly 20 years approved by the FDA for people with this aggressive disease.

Looking Back!

Last month we discussed:

We would also like to thank all attendees on our Risk Management course which we provided in April.

We also received a fantastic review from one of our customers:

“When there have been technical difficulties, the staff have been frequently quick, knowledgeable, and able to help restore normal operations. The level of service is above the levels of several large name companies, I struggle to think of what more I can ask for.”

We appreciate all feedback as this helps us to both assess and look to improve both the products and services we provide.

Still to Come this Month

Test Execution Course – May 23rd to May 24th

5th April 20234th August 2023

April Newsletter 2023

Welcome to the April 2023 newsletter from 3SL!

If you have any questions about your use of Cradle, please do not hesitate to contact 3SL Support.

Is SaaS Beneficial?

Traditionally, software was installed on in-house computers. You managed the hardware that ran the software, ensured the integrity of the data created with the software with appropriate backups, and applied all the operating system and firmware updates needed to keep the system running properly.

Increasingly, individuals and companies simply want to use software, and have someone else host it, ensure the integrity of the data that they create, and manage the resilience of the underlying hardware and software infrastructure.

This is SaaS – software as a service.

Most large software companies try hard to force all customers to use SaaS by buying subscriptions. For example, although it is possible to buy Microsoft and Adobe products to install in-house, you have to work hard to find the part of their websites where such purchases can be made.

SaaS is charged on a per user per month basis for the functionality used. You pay more as you add users and as you access more functionality. You can stop the service when access to the software will be removed, all your data will be deleted, and you will stop being charged. This is all reasonable.

Some SaaS Benefits

SaaS brings benefits including:

You do not need to provide resources (hardware or VMs) to run the software
You do not have to maintain these resources nor provide the staff to perform this maintenance
You can easily react to short term needs
You do not need to provide integrity for the data that is created
You do not have any costs if you don’t need the resource for a while

Problems with SaaS

Of course there are also disadvantages to SaaS:

It will be more expensive than deploying in-house, typically after 2 years
You have no direct access, so you are reliant on your SaaS provider being responsive and complying with the SLA – you do have a Service Level Agreement don’t you?
You cannot directly interact with the software and must rely on the SaaS provider’s competence with the software and their understanding of what you want to achieve. This could cause delays or errors.
You do not have physical control over your data or the hardware that hosts it
Your data may be exposed by being given to third parties without your knowledge or consent, given such as the US Patriot Act (parts of which are still in effect) and the collaboration between groups including the EU and 5 Eyes – this includes all data centres managed by US companies regardless of their location, so be mindful when considering US-owned Infrastructure as a Service such as, but not only, Azure and AWS
You have to manage the IP ranges that are to have access, unless your SaaS allows access by the entire Internet

Is a Cradle SaaS Worth It?

This depends on your situation. In general:

if you do not have an IT organisation, or
if Cradle is too small to be applicable to your IT organisation

and:

if you are confident that 3SL understands Cradle and will be responsive to your needs and
if the SLA and Cradle SaaS are acceptable (see the 3SL Cradle End User SaaS Agreement – EUSA), and
you have agreed a location for your data (within 3SL or in a SaaS Virtual Private Cloud – VPC – that 3SL will build for you in an agreed location)

then, yes, SaaS is a good solution as it allows you to concentrate on using Cradle to the benefit of your projects and leaves the management of the Cradle infrastructure to others.

Fixed IPs for Cradle SaaS

We do not want a Cradle SaaS to be accessible by the entire Internet. Each Cradle SaaS includes an external firewall that specifies the IP addresses or ranges (CIDRs) of the locations that are allowed access. Access from any IP address is ignored if it is not in this list of allowed locations.

This method works well except when a user’s IP address is not fixed. A user’s IP address is not fixed if they access the SaaS from either:

many locations, such as customer sites, hotel rooms, train stations, public tea rooms, or
a domestic Internet connection where the ISP assigns a different IP address to the user every time that they connect to the Internet

In these cases, 3SL will consider the size of the IP address range. A small IP address range may be acceptable to both you and 3SL. For example, the CIDR:

78.37.252.0/22

is a range of 1,024 IP addresses 78.37.252.0 to 78.37.255.255 inclusive. In general, 3SL will not accept CIDRs of more than 64 addresses.

The solution to this problem is to have a fixed IP address.

Fixed IP Addresses and VPNs

If the end user’s location is not fixed or does not have a fixed IP address, they can get a fixed IP address by:

An organisation may provide a VPN. If so, then route the user’s connection to the Cradle SaaS over this VPN. This has two advantages. First, the connection from the end user’s computer is encrypted by the VPN, so it can be used safely from highly insecure locations such as tea shops or hotel rooms. Second, the connection to the SaaS will be from the organisation’s fixed external IP address. This is transparent to the end user. The end user simply starts the VPN as they will for all company work, and then connect to the Cradle SaaS.
A fixed IP address can be purchased from a range of providers, such as are listed here
For an extra fee, 3SL can provide a reverse proxy server that provides a VPN. The end user connects this VPN using authentication details from 3SL, typically a certificate issued by 3SL. The connection to the Cradle SaaS will come from the reverse proxy server, which has a fixed IP address. This method is also secure as it uses an encrypted VPN connection, and so it is safe to use from insecure locations.

Happy Easter

Easter, also called Pascha or Resurrection Sunday, is a Christian festival and cultural holiday.

We would like to wish all our customers, prospects, distributors and suppliers a Happy Easter:

St George’s Day

Saint George’s Day is the feast day of Saint George, celebrated by Christian churches, countries, and cities of which he is the patron saint:

Depicting the legend of St George in an ACD — St. George as a UML Activity Diagram (ACD)

If you ever want a reminder of the legend of St. George the diagram above may be handy. For more information see the Cradle help section for ACD

We would like to wish all our customers, prospects, distributors and suppliers a Happy Saint George’s Day.

World Autism Acceptance Week

World Autism Acceptance Week is on Monday 27th March to Sunday 2nd April with Autism Awareness Day on 2nd April. The theme for 2023 is colour.

The National Autistic Society provide support for autistic adults and children and their families.

Parental Alienation Awareness Day

Parental Alienation Awareness Day is on 25th April each year. This is a global campaign to raise awareness of Parental Alienation. It is an opportunity for parents, grandparents, extended family members or friends to come together to access information, advice and to enable connection and support for others affected by Parental Alienation.

Social Media

Twitter

We helped to celebrate and raise awareness on both #InternationalWomensDay and #WorldDownSyndromeDay.

#hensoldt were exhibiting at #HeliExpo (booth 5614) where they talked about airborne portfolio covering mission systems, situational awareness and certified lightweight flight data recorder. Hensoldt also won contracts from #Hyundai Heavy Industries to provide six offshore patrol vessels and two corvettes which are currently being constructed for the Philippine Navy.

Congratulations to the team at @SafranSeats who had been recognised by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development at the CIPD Wales Awards for being the Best Wellbeing Initiative in the region for a large company.

@MirionHQ were exhibiting (booth 3) at the Cyber Security Implementation Workshop where they provided an insight into their solutions for cyber security, command and control and lifecycle management.

@Roche and Lilly have joined together to enhance early diagnosis of Alzheimers disease.

Looking Back!

Last month we discussed:

We would also like to thank all attendees on our Document Publisher course which we provided in March.

Still to Come this Month

Risk Management training course

22nd March 20235th April 2023

March Newsletter 2023

Welcome to the March 2023 newsletter from 3SL!

If you have any questions about your use of Cradle, please do not hesitate to contact 3SL Support.

Cyber Essentials Assessment

Certified for Cyber Essentials

We, Structured Software Systems Limited (3SL), have been successful in our re-assessment under the Cyber Essentials scheme for another year.

As a Government-backed, industry-supported scheme, Cyber Essentials aims to help organisations protect themselves against common online threats.

By being certified compliant with Cyber Essentials, you can be assured that 3SL’s IT systems have, at the very least, a secure Information Security Management System (ISMS) and a robust set of operating principles and controls to safeguard our, and our customers’ information.

ISO9001

3SL are proud to announce their fourth year recertification for ISO9001. The team working with the audit said we passed with flying colours and there were no non-conformances. This is a testimony to all who have helped throughout the year improving and recording our processes.

The ISO says of the scheme

“ISO 9001 sets out the criteria for a quality management system and is the only standard in the family that can be certified to (although this is not a requirement). It can be used by any organization, large or small, regardless of its field of activity. In fact, there are over one million companies and organizations in over 170 countries certified to ISO 9001.
This standard is based on a number of quality management principles including a strong customer focus, the motivation and implication of top management, the process approach and continual improvement. These principles are explained in more detail in ISO’s quality management principles. Using ISO 9001 helps ensure that customers get consistent, good-quality products and services, which in turn brings many business benefits.”

INCOSE

3SL are pleased to be advertising in the latest INCOSE members newsletter. You can find our latest publication here.

INCOSE Logo

3SL Inc SAM Registration

Our US partner, 3SL Inc, have successfully renewed their System for Award Management (SAM) registration for another year. This allows them to provide our products and services to the US government.

Happy Mothers Day

Mothers Day 2023 was on Sunday 19th March in the UK and Sunday 14th May in the USA. In other countries like Italy, Spain and Portugal, Sunday 19th March 2023 was Fathers Day where as the rest of the world, will celebrate it on June 18th 2023.

“Happy Mothers Day”

St Patricks Day

17th March marked St Patricks Day. St Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland and St Patricks Day is a national holiday in the Republic of Ireland although the day is celebrated all over the world.

3SL hope you all had a wonderful St Patricks Day.

Spring Time is Here!

On 20th March it was the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere and the first day of autumn in the southern hemisphere. This date marks the Astronomical spring equinox where as the Meterological spring started on the 1st of March.

British Summer Time

Daylight savings begins on 26th March so remember the clocks go forward 1 hour at 1am here in the UK and throughout the EU. Let’s hope for a beautiful summer.

Looking Back!

Last month we discussed:

7th February 20237th February 2023

February Newsletter 2023

Welcome to the February 2023 newsletter from 3SL!

If you have any questions about your use of Cradle, please do not hesitate to contact 3SL Support here.

Happy Chinese New Year!

新年快乐！
3SL 祝愿我们的所有客户，合作伙伴和供应商2023吉祥如意！

The Chinese New Year holiday reached its climax with the Lantern Festival, celebrated on February 5th, 2023.

What are your Requirements for Valentines Day?

February is the month of Saint Valentine.

3SL Heart based on Photo by SHAHBAZ AKRAM from Pexels — Love Cradle

We want to share the love of engineering through Requirements Management and integrated MBSE. Rather than roses, we will use Cradle!

So if you need more Cradle licences for a bigger project or you want to upgrade your single user product to Cradle 7.7, then contact 3SL for further information.

Happy Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day)

We hope you have a great pancake day (February 21st) whatever your process flow may be!

Shows a pancake in a process flow — Pancake Flow Diagram (PFD) !

A PFD (Process Flow Diagram), rather than Pancake Flow Diagram shows a particular task or process that the system can perform. This is termed a flow. Systems may have many flows, each of which may have concurrent or optional elements.

Modelling the flow before you take action can ensure you have thought about, and documented, the expected behaviour(s). It can be clear which parts of the system are operating in parallel and which could be bottlenecks awaiting the outcome of previous operations. However, modelling Shrove Tuesday’s pancakes may be a bit excessive ….

Looking Back!

Last month we discussed:

Still to Come this Month

- Requirements Management online course – February 20th to 23rd

To book your place on the course please see here.