Novell
exteNd Composer

5.2.1 RELEASE NOTES

March 2005

Welcome to Novell® exteNd ComposerTM (Version 5.2.1). These release notes include the following sections:

Important note about
5.2.1 documentation
Where to find information about Version 5.2.1 of Novell exteNd
Installing exteNd Composer How to prepare for installing Novell exteNd Composer
System requirements Software and hardware needed to run Novell exteNd Composer
What's new in 5.2 New features in Version 5.2 of Novell exteNd Composer
What's new in 5.2.1 New features in Version 5.2.1 of Novell exteNd Composer
Documentation updates Updates to the documentation for Novell exteNd Composer
Known issues Known problems with this version of Novell exteNd Composer
Problems fixed in Version 5.2 Problems that have been fixed in 5.2, organized by category
Problems fixed in Version 5.2.1 Problems that have been fixed in 5.2.1, organized by category

Release note updates   To check for updates to these release notes, click here.

exteNd Composer Web site   For the latest exteNd Composer downloads, discussion forums, news, and information, click here.

Important note about 5.2.1 documentation

Documentation specific to the 5.2.1 maintenance release of exteNd is provided in the product release note files:

These files include:

The other exteNd help and PDF files are still primarily at the 5.2 level; they have not been updated to reflect 5.2.1 product changes (except where noted).

Installing exteNd Composer

For a complete guide to installing exteNd Composer and the exteNdTM 5 Suite, see Installing Novell exteNd in the exteNd 5 Suite help. Additional notes and updates related to installation are listed below:

System requirements

This section describes the software and hardware needed to run exteNd Composer:

Development environment

System requirements for the development environment are listed in the exteNd Suite Release Notes.

Server environment

System requirements for the server environment are listed in the exteNd Suite Release Notes.

What's new in 5.2

For information about new 5.2 features, see What's New in the exteNd Composer help.

What's new in 5.2.1

This section describes the new features of exteNd Composer for 5.2.1:

Service Profiling

Composer includes a new service profiling feature that, when used in conjunction with Novell Customer Support, provides timing statistics to help diagnose and resolve issues such as memory leaks, bottlenecks, threading issues, and other problems. Service profiling can be used with Servlet and SOAP service triggers, and can be enabled using the Enable Profiling check box on Servlet or Soap HTTP service trigger property sheets. Profiling data is captured and stored in XML format in the exteNd5/AppServer/Composer/profiles directory. NOTE: Enabling service profiling will decrease performance, and should only be used for debugging purposes with the assistance of Novell Customer Support personnel.

Tracing

Composer includes a new TCP tracing feature that, when used in conjunction with Novell Customer Support, collects connection data that can be used to diagnose and resolve performance issues relating to connections. You access this feature by selecting Tracing from the Tools menu. This feature is designed to be used for debugging purposes with the assistance of Novell Customer Support personnel.

Documentation updates

The following updates apply to the documentation and help for exteNd Composer:

Modifying servlet type of previously deployed servlet   Under certain circumstances changing Servlet types of an already deployed application causes errors during server import/build.

Remove button in JMS Service Console  The Remove button described on page 119 of the JMS Connect PDF documentation, and in the JMS Connect online help, was removed in Extend Composer Version 5.0. To remove a JMS Service, use the application server management console.

Index entry for xcrootca.jar  The Index entry for xcrootca.jar in the HTML Connect PDF documentation, and in the HTML Connect online help, is incorrect. The index entry should be for agrootca.jar. However, selecting the xcrootca.jar index entry in either the PDF documentation or online help will take you to the correct documentation for agrootca.jar. (TDR6891)

Help for Save Project As… Command  If you select File > Save Project As, then select the Help button in the Save Project As dialog box, a help file is displayed that describes how to work with projects, but does not provide specific help for the Save Project As command. For information about using the Save Project As command, follow the steps given in the online help in the topic titled "Creating a New Project", starting at step 2 in the procedure. (TDR6978)

Multiple Web Service Receives in the Same Process Manager Component  When multiple Web Service Receives exist in the same Process Manager component, you must ensure that each Web Service Receive is uniquely identified. A Web Service Receive is uniquely identified by its Process ID (which Composer assigns) and its Correlation ID (which you must uniquely assign to each Web Service Receive). If you do not specify a Correlation ID for a Web Service Receive, Composer sets the Correlation ID to be the same as the Process ID, which results multiple Web Service Receives with the same Process ID and Correlation ID pair. This will cause errors when the Process component executes. (TDR7168)

Menus and Composer Online Help sections in Getting Started  The "Menus" section in “Getting Started” in the PDF and online help documentation includes a table that lists the Composer menu commands. The following are corrections to the menu table (these corrections also apply to the "Composer Online Help" section, which is also in "Getting Started" in the PDF documentation and the online help):

(TDR7182)

Illustration of XML Signature Tab of WS Interchange Action Dialog box  The illustration of the XML Signature Tab of the WS Interchange Action Dialog box in the PDF and the online help is incorrect (it shows the screen from a previous version of the software). However, the descriptive text that accompanies the illustration is correct. See the discussion of Certificate Resources in the Composer User's Guide for more information about how to use certificates in conjunction with Web Services. (TDR7731)

Known issues

The following is a summary of current known issues with exteNd Composer. Note that you may encounter other issues; check the release note updates for more information.

Common issues

XML Mapping and Action issues

Linux designer issues

JDBC Connect issues

Animation issues

WSDL issues

Subproject issues

Deployment issues

Configuration file issues

NTLM authentication issues

Application server issues

3270 Connect issues

5250 Connect issues

CICS/RPC Connect issues

Data General Connect issues

EDI Connect issues

HP3000 Connect issues

HTML Connect issues

JMS Connect issues

PeopleSoft, Siebel, JD Edwards, Lawson, Oracle Applications, and Baan Connects issues

Business Process Manager (BPM) issues

SAP Connect issues

T27 Connect issues

Tandem Connect issues

Telnet Connect issues

UTS Connect issues

Upgrading from Composer 4.2 to 5.x


Upgrading from Composer 5.2 to 5.2.1

Except for the MySQL/Process Manager issue described in MySQL Issues, no backward-compatibility issues have been introduced with Composer 5.2.1. Projects created under 5.2 are fully compatible with the 5.2.1 design-time environment. Production applications built with Composer 5.2 do not need to be rebuilt for 5.2.1.


MySQL Issues


Multiple entries for Hospital Project in Recent projects list


Expired Extend Composer Enterprise Server License Issues


Firefox and Mozilla browser with Process Manager issues


Sample Projects issues

Registry Browser Issues


Oracle Database Issues


Using JNDI and CORBA factory classes in Composer Designer


Installation Issues


Problems fixed in Version 5.2

Category

Description

Common If the user changes the "Template Name" parameter from SEARCHINPUT to SEARCHINPUTtest and then resizes one of these parameters, the added test will disappear
Common Form resources created with the initial exteNd Composer 5.0 beta were stored in a subdirectory of "xhtml". This has been changed to "form" for 5.0. You will have to copy any xforms files that you have created in beta from the xhtml directory to the form directory to use them.
Common In the Custom Script Editor window, when the user highlights a function in the Validated Functions List pane, the Function Creation and Variable Declaration pane scrolls to and displays the function but does not highlight the function in this pane.
Mapping After editing a Map action the document trees will redraw and only the current tree node will not collapse.
Repeat Closing a loop action dialog with the enter key rather than a mouse click causes the action model frame to scroll to the bottom.
JDBC When dragging a DOM element into the SQL STATEMENT pane single quotes are wrapped around all element names the column type is not recognized.
JDBC The keyword "FROM" is missing from the Delete tree in the JDBC keyword selection menu.
Deployment Deploying a deployment object more than once throws an error on Windows XP. On the second attempt to deploy, the user is able to proceed through the screens in the deployment console, but the deployment report comes back with an error message (the beginning of which is below).

ERROR:

Deployment Report:

Deployment location will be: C:\Program
Files\Novell\exteNd5\AppServer\Composer\tmp

Initializing DOM from deployment JAR descriptor file.

Workaround: You may reboot the server to clear the cache. The problem is caused when the IE 'Check for newer page versions' is set to 'Never'. To avoid the problem, change the setting to ‘Every visit to the page’.
Deployment If you were using Sybase as the Process Database in version 5.0-beta and deployed Process projects with version 5.0-beta, you will need to re-deploy those projects in release 5.2. You will also need to re-initialize the database.
Deployment When deploying a Composer project to WebSphere, the name of the deployed application will always be the name of the enterprise archive file, without the .ear extension. Any other name that the user attempts to assign to the application, within the deployment console, will be ignored.
Deployment After deploying an EJB servlet to exteNd Application Server using exteNd Composer 5.2, an error is generated when trying to access an EJB from exteNd Composer Custom Scripts.

Workaround: You must use Novell HTTP handler, which may be set via the HTTP handler type drop down on the System Environment tab of the Composer Configuration dialog. The Configuration dialog is accessed from the Tools/Configuration menu. The Novell HTTP Handler has some problems with secure sites when using Composer HTML Connect, therefore, we recommend using the Composer Handler unless you are accessing EJBs deployed to a Novell server.
Deployment The app server is designed to run under the root uid. If this is not done, there will be errors during deployment of Composer objects. If one chooses not to run the app server under the root uid, there are at least two workarounds to this problem.

1. Go to Common/jre/bin directory and run policytool. Open java.policy file, which is located in Common/jre/lib/security. Double-click on codebase ALL and add FilePermission to execute SilverCmd file located in AppServer/bin directory. Save policyfile and exit policytool.

or

2. Login as root. Go to AppServer/bin directory and execute first "chown root SilverServer" and then "chmod a+s SilverServer". logout.
Validation Validation error with mustUnderstand attribute defined in schema. There was a change to the soapEnvelope schema that fixes this problem. This file must replace the existing one in schema catalog. Please contact support.
HTML Animated GIFs: Some animated GIFs on some web pages have been found to be problematic in Composer Design time as they cause the application to run very slowly or some rare instances freeze. As a workaround, we have included an option to turn animated GIFs off. Currently, the only way to do this is to edit the xconfig.xml file manually. In the exteNdComposer/Designer/bin directory, edit the "xconfig.xml" file. Search for the <ANIMATED_GIFS>ON</ANIMATED_GIFS> section and change the value to OFF. Please note that as a consequence of this, some GIFs may not appear correctly.
BPM Composer Process Manager 5.2 does not support clustering. Clustering support will be implemented in a future release.

 

Problems fixed in Version 5.2.1

Category

Description

Common Deleting a project: A missing message causes a confusing dialog to appear when using File, Delete Project. The actual dialog text should read: Deleting a project will delete all files within the project location. Are you certain you want to delete the project named xxx?
Help Context-based help is now available in the UI for the following commands:

File > New > xObject > Resource > Image

File > New > xObject > Resource > DTD

File > New > xObject > Resource > JSP

Component > Add Watch

Tools > Profiles > Server

Action > New Action > SQL Statement

Help is also available at design time for the various SQL creation wizards available from the SQL Statement action (in the JBDC Component Editor).

Tomcat Tomcat only supports J2EE 1.2 (WAR 2.2). The default when creating the WAR file project is 2.3. When deploying, the user must change this default.

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