RELEASE NOTES

December 2003

Welcome to Novell^® exteNd Director^TM, Version 5.0. These release notes include the following sections:

Installing exteNd Director	How to prepare for installing Novell exteNd Director
System requirements	Software and hardware needed to run Novell exteNd Director
What's new	New features in this version of Novell exteNd Director
Known issues	Known problems with this version of Novell exteNd Director (with workarounds, if available)

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

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

Installing exteNd Director

For a complete guide to installing exteNd Director 5.0 and the exteNd^TM 5 Suite, see Installing Novell exteNd in the exteNd 5 Suite help.

System requirements

This section describes the software and hardware needed to run exteNd Director 5.0:

• Development environment
• Server environment
• Project setup
• J2EE compatibility

Development environment

Topic	What's required
Operating system	One of the following: Windows 2003 Windows 2000 with Service Pack 1 or higher Windows XP Professional
Minimum RAM (memory)	128 MB (256 MB recommended)
Disk space	250 MB
Display mode	True Color (32-bit), 800 x 600 or higher (1024 X 768 minimum recommended)
Java 2 Runtime Environment	JRE 1.4.2_01-b06 (installed automatically)

Server environment

Topic	What's required
Application server	One of the following: Supported in exteNd 5: Novell exteNd Application Server Version 4.0.1 Novell exteNd Application Server Version 5.1 BEA WebLogic Server Version 6.1 Service Pack 4 BEA WebLogic Server Version 8.1 Service Pack 1 IBM WebSphere Server Advanced Edition Version 5.0 Jakarta Tomcat Version 4.1
Operating system	One of the following: Supported in exteNd 5: SuSE Enterprise 8 RedHat Advanced Server 2.1 NetWare® 6.5 Windows 2000, 2003 Solaris 8,9
Database support	One of the following: Shipping with exteNd 5: MySQL 4.1 (alpha) - For development only. Not supported in production. Supported by exteNd 5: Oracle 8i and 9i IBM DB2 7.2.4, 8.1 Microsoft SQL Server 7.0/2000 Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) 11.9.2, 12, 12.5 Sybase Adaptive Server Anywhere 8
LDAP directory	(Optional) exteNd Director supports the following: Novell eDirectoryTM 8.6.2, 8.7 Novell exteNd LDAP Utility (included) - For development only
Web browser	One of the following: For the PAC and Portal tiers: Internet Explorer 5.5 and higher (recommended) Netscape 6.x Mozilla 1.4 For the PMC: Internet Explorer 5.5 and higher

Project setup

Topic	What's required
Express Portal	The Express and Server Express install options of exteNd 5 will automatically deploy a starter project called Express Portal. View running project: http://localhost/ExpressPortal/portal/main Edit project: %NOVELL_EXTEND_HOME%\Projects\ExpressPortal\ExpressPortal.spf. NOTE: Multiple-project deployment is supported in non-sharedlib mode only. Express Portal is installed by default in non-sharedlib mode. If you want to use the sharedlib feature, you must first undeploy the Express Portal. Open the Server Management Console at Start->Programs->Novell exteNd 5.0->AppServer->Server Management Console (your server must be running for the console to open). At the top left, there are four icons. Click the last icon (called Deployment). Expand the SilverMaster50 tree and select the ExpressPortal_war deployment. Click undeploy.
exteNd Director database connection pool	You should store your exteNd Director Content Management files in a separate database. Connection pools can be set up using the Server Management Console that installs with the Novell exteNd Application Server: Create a database to store your exteNd Director Content Management information using MySQL or another commercially available database from our list of supported database platforms. Open the Server Management Console at Start->Programs->Novell exteNd 5.0->AppServer->Server Management Console (your server must be running for the console to open). Click the Databases tab. Create a new Connection Pool specifying the newly created exteNd Director database as your data source. When going through the File->New Project wizard, specify this connection pool on the data sources tab.
Shared libraries	exteNd Director 5.0 introduces the concept of shared libraries to share commonly used JARs across multiple projects. To set up shared libraries: Once your project has been created, open exteNd Director, go to Project->Director->Shared Lib, and click the Shared Jars tab. Click the Copy Jars button. Click the Update AgJARs.conf button. Restart your Application Server if it is already running. NOTE: Multiple-project deployment is only supported in non-sharedlib mode. Express Portal is installed by default in non-sharedlib mode. If you wish to use the sharedlib feature, you must first undeploy the Express Portal. See above for instructions on how to do this.
Deployment	You must deploy your projects to SilverMaster. When you install exteNd 5, the install sets up the SilverMaster for you. In your deployment settings, specify your server name and use SilverMaster50 as the database entry. This is a separate database from the connection pool above. For more information on this, see the Installing Novell exteNd.

J2EE compatibility

This version of exteNd Director enables you to develop applications for Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) Version 1.3.

What's new

For a summary of the new features in this version of exteNd Director, see What's New in the exteNd Director help.

Known issues

This version of exteNd Director has the following issues you should be aware of:

exteNd Director functionality

The following list represents current known issues with exteNd Director 5.0. Note that this is a high-level summary of known issues. You may encounter others; go to release notes updates for more information.

MySQL 4.1 is not supported in production environments at this time. MySQL 4.1 ships with exteNd 5 on Windows, Linux, and Solaris at this time. This software is alpha quality at the time of the exteNd 5 ship and is not supported in any production environment. Novell recommends that you use another commercially available database from the exteNd list of supported database vendors for any production application. Note that MySQL 4.1 for NetWare was not available at the time of the exteNd 5 ship. When MySQL 4.1 becomes stable on all platforms, work will be done to certify exteNd 5 against the database and add it to the exteNd list of supported databases for production.

• MySQL 4.1, which ships with exteNd 5, is NOT supported in production environments.
• (Windows only) Avoid using the MySQL that ships with exteNd 5 if you do not want to conflict with an existing MySQL installation. If you have a different database from the exteNd list of supported database vendors, you can choose to use that database while running through the Custom option of the exteNd 5 install.

Components are deprecated in exteNd Director 5.0. In exteNd Director 5.0, the Portlet 1.0 standard has been implemented. The use of components has been. Some public API will be in the javadoc for components. Some of these are there for the portlet support, and others will be deprecated in exteNd 5 point releases.

Do NOT lock down the Application Server at installation. During the installation, instead of Application Server lockdown as suggested by default, select not to restrict Application Server access. Otherwise, after you deploy the project you will have to unlock the Application Server in order to access the application deployed.

Restart Application Server after redeploy if project is using shared libraries. Restart the Application Server after you redeploy any shared library project due to existing classloading issues with shared library mode.

Project names must not begin with a number. If the project name begins with a number, you will not be able to access the Portal. (PPR 43193)

There are many known issues with MBCS (multibyte character support) in exteNd Director 5.0. Novell will be addressing all of these in the next point release. MBCS will work in some places, but you may encounter problems in many areas of the product. Some known issues include:

• Cannot modify display name for specific locale (MBCS only) from the Director Administration Console. (PPR 43317)

• Display name using MBCS does not render correctly in the Portlet Selector. (PPR 43316)
• Child page name not displayed correctly in navigation portlet when using MBCS. (PPR 43160)
• MBCS on Tomcat is not supported at this time. (PPR 43148)
• In the PMC, document names are displayed vertically when using MBCS. (PPR 43135)  

 

Portal

• Portal authentication
  • Require User Authentication in the Server Management Console is supported in exteNd Director 5.0. However, if your server is configured to use an LDAP realm and you authenticate with \SilverStream\Login, you will not be logged in to the Portal. The Portal will ask for your credentials again.
• Container, shared and user pages
  • Pages cannot contain the following special characters: ? (question mark), / (forward slash),or ; (semicolon). (PPR 41784)
  • Pages should not contain a double quote (") in the title. This will cause problems if the page name shows up in the portal navigation. (PPR 41766)
• Portlet support has the following issues:
  • JSP aggregation is not supported for portlets. There are no JSP tags for portlets with this release. The existing JSP tags for components cannot be used with portlets.
  • User Information (portlet<user-attribute>) has not yet been implemented (PPR 36687)
  • When creating a new project, you can decide to not include the Accessory Portlets, but doing so will create errors on the Portal. (PPR 41892)
• Other Portal issues
  • Changing portal context name will break Portal. (PPR 39455)
  • The PhoneList component does not work properly on Sybase ASE 12.0. If you execute a Find operation using the PhoneList component, the operation does not return any results. (PPR 34941)
  • The Headline News component is no longer shipped with exteNd Director. Use the RSS portlet to access freely available news sources.
  • CMPidReaderPortlet will not be in exteNd Director 5.0.

exteNd Director development environment

• Error when deploying a J2EE 1.3 project to the Novell exteNd Application Server 4.0. When developing a 1.3 EAR deployment plan in the exteNd Director 5.0 development environment and deploying it to the Application Server 4.0, you may get the following error at deployment time:

   
              Unable to parse the XML file, reason: Error on line 35 of document file:
              /C:/deployment/Ear13/EARDeplPlan40.xml:  
              Element "earJar" does not allow "deployedObject" here."           
            

  This is because this element was added to the DTD after Application Server 4.0 shipped. Simply remove this element from the deployment plan using the XML editing mode, and deploy again. You can easily view the deployment plan by right-clicking the project name in the exteNd Director development environment.

• Undeploy from SMC may not be recognized by the exteNd Director development environment and cause quick-deploy to fail. If you are using quick-deploy in the exteNd Director development environment and undeploy your project using the SMC, the development environment does not recognize that this project has been removed. On the next deploy it will only deploy what it thinks has changed as per the quick-deploy option. To avoid this problem, always use the exteNd Director development environment to undeploy projects that are using the quick-deploy option.
• Error stating deployment plan file newer than deployment descriptor. This is expected behavior if you go in and modify the deployment plan after the deployment descriptor is generated. This happens often when using EARs, where you create the deployment plan as a second step. The error will not cause any loss in functionality.
• Problems when using the xsi:schemaLocation attribute. If you use the Form Wizard to create a form from sample data that uses the xsi:schemaLocation and/or xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation attributes, the wizard will NOT add any schema URIs from those attributes to the model element's schema attribute. You must do this manually. It is your responsibility to copy the schema files into the resource set in order for the form to work at runtime and in the preview tab of the development environment.
• ANTLR problem in analyzing files that have a one-line comment at the end. Do not include a comment line at the bottom of a custom class file; it may cause a compilation error.
• Layout region after a nested repeat is not a supported configuration in exteNd Director 5.0. In the Form Designer, the Event Editor cannot add a layout region after a nested repeat. (PPR 39792)
• wsdl2java.exe fails - cannot instantiate java compiler. The workaround is to add the -nocompile option to the command and then perform the compile after executing wsdl2java. (PPR 39242)

   

Content management and search

• Invalid parameter binding exception when multiple users create and publish documents. (PPR 41228)
• cmgr.CopyFolder and cmgr.MoveFolder fail when document has child of link. (PPR 28279)
• You may experience difficulties once you increase the levels of folders to above 50. (PPR 33476)
• Special attention needs to be paid in configuring Autonomy search when dealing with publishing and/or importing XML documents. See the documentation for more details. (PPR 39428)

Administration console

• Add user in the DAC when using Mozilla has "Admin" prefilled. This is a Mozilla browser settings issue. In the browser, you can go to Edit|Preferences|Privacy & Security|Passwords|Manage Stored Passwords and delete the admin user name. The next time you log in to the DAC, don't let it store the admin user name and password; now admin will not show up in the Add Users user ID text box.
• The DAC currently does not run on Mozilla or Netscape. You must use IE -- 5.5 or higher.
  

 

Installation

• Cache Coordinator does not support spaces in install directory. If using the exteNd Director Cache Coordinator on Windows (typically only used in a production environment), the exteNd Suite must be installed in a directory without a space. By default, the exteNd 5 install chooses Program Files as the root of the install. You will have to change this at install time if you plan to use the Cache Coordinator.
• Uninstall does not delete all files on Linux. The uninstall of the exteNd Suite on Linux does not remove the mysqld entries from /etc/passwd, /etc/group, and /etc/shadow that were created during the install. You should manually delete these before reinstallation of exteNd 5.
• Sun's JCE must be installed into the JRE for Application Servers that run on JRE 1.3. This is a simple copy of four Jars (downloadable at http://java.sun.com/products/jce/index-122.html) into the jre/lib/ext directory of the app server's jre. This needs to be done ONLY if the Application Server is running 1.3 JRE (such as exteNd 4.0.X or WebLogic 6.1). If this is not done, encryption of portlet preferences will be disabled at runtime.
  
   

Platform

• Tomcat needs to be started in a certain way to support XSL transformations. To avoid this problem, start Tomcat from the command line using the following batch file: C:\Tomcat4.1\bin\startup.bat
• When using Tomcat, you must deploy the portal WAR before deploying any portlet application WARs. This is an issue only with Tomcat. If you need to clean your databases, you will have to undeploy both the portlet application and the portal WAR and then redeploy them in the correct order.
• PMC access causes stack trace on the Tomcat server. When exteNd Director is deployed on Tomcat, a stack trace is issued on startup and shutdown if the user accesses the PMC during the session. This is an issue with Tomcat where Apache is attempting to persist session information across server shutdowns. You can add this to your server.xml to not persist sessions:

           
            <Manager className="org.apache.catalina.session.StandardManager" 
                algorithm="MD5" checkInterval="60" debug="0" 
                duplicates="0" expiredSessions="1" maxActive="1" 
                maxActiveSessions="-1" maxInactiveInterval="300" 
                pathname="" randomClass="java.security.SecureRandom" 
                rejectedSessions="0" sessionCounter="5">
            </Manager>

   
• Oracle Thin Driver needs XA to be turned off. The Oracle Thin Driver will work fine if you unselect the XA flag when you add the connection pool using this driver. (PPR 40681)
• Oracle OCI Driver needs XA to be turned on. The Oracle OCI Driver will work fine if you leave the XA flag on when you add the connection pool using this driver.
• NetWare X-Windows GUI opens when Portal is accessed. When accessing the Express Portal URL (http://hostname:83/ExpressPortal/portal), the NetWare server will load the X-Windows GUI if it is not loaded. If it is loaded, the NetWare server will switch console screens to the GUI. To stop this from occurring, restart the Application Server in the following way: silverserver +Djava.awt.headless=true (the + sign forces the Java option through to the JVM). This parameter solves the problem.
   

MySQL functionality

• Multibyte character support currently does not work. The MySQL development team missed compiling utf8 support into MySQL alpha 4.1.0. It should be fixed in 4.1.1. This information is posted at: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=mysql+utf8&start=10&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=bbqcqt%24qeg%241%40FreeBSD.csie.NCTU.edu.tw&rnum=17
• No subquery optimization in the 4.1.0 alpha release of the product. The MySQL development team has fixed this in the next alpha release. This has little impact on normal DAC and PMC processing, but the following situations can cause MySQL to use up to 99% of the CPU for a considerable amount of time:
  • Copying folders in the Content Management subsystem
  • Importing a ZIP file into the Content Management subsystem




• SQL NOT statements are not evaluated as expected in some cases. Extend Director does not have any code that is affected by this, but developers may run into it when writing their own SQL code. For example, say you have a table called table1 with the following columns and rows: key_column value_column 0 value0 1 value1 2 value2. The following SQL statement returns an empty result set: SELECT key_column FROM table1 WHERE NOT value_column = 'value0'. If you put parentheses around the evaluation condition, it returns keys 1 and 2 as expected. SELECT key_column FROM table1 WHERE NOT (value_column = 'value0'). The MySQL team is consulting the SQL-99 standard team to determine whether this is a bug.

Issues remaining from previous versions

 

• Caution must be exercised when removing Locksmith users and groups.   The Directory subsystem allows you to remove exteNd Director Locksmith users and groups. However, you need to be very careful when removing Locksmiths. Make sure you keep at least one Locksmith user. Otherwise, security will be open to everyone.

  If you need to remove a Locksmith user from the Directory service, remove the user first from the Locksmith ACL list defined by the Security service. To remove a Locksmith user:

  1. Open the DAC.

  2. Click the Security Management icon at the top. Select locksmithElementType and remove the user from the list.

  3. Click the Directory Management icon at the top, then remove the user from the realm.

  IMPORTANT: Make sure you have at least one user remaining in the Locksmith ACL list. Otherwise, security will be open to everyone.

• You cannot connect to the WebDAV server from Web folders containing extended characters.  If a Windows Web folder contains documents with extended characters (such as MBCS or French with accents), you will not be able to connect the folder to the exteNd Director WebDAV server. (PPR 33640)

• Content importer attempts to remove CM elements when trying to overwrite existing elements.  When you configure the data import descriptor (contentmgmt_did.xml) to overwrite all existing elements in the CM repository, the content importer attempts to delete existing elements before importing new elements. If the CM repository contains layout styles or document types with associated layout styles, an exception may occur during import. (PPR 35542)

  There are two workarounds:

  • Configure the data import descriptor (DID) not to overwrite layout styles or document types.

  • In the PMC, remove the layout style descriptors associated with layout styles before importing content with overwrite enabled for layout styles and document types.

• Extends chain for interfaces not fully expanded.   Due to a limitation in the version of Sun NetBeans used in the exteNd Director development environment, the exteNds chain for interfaces is not fully expanded. As a result, valid API calls may not show up as available when using code completion. See the exteNd Director API Reference for the full set of valid API calls.

• Using EJB wrappers not supported.   exteNd Director manager APIs contain EJB wrappers. However, Novell does not officially support their use in Version 4.1.

• Accessing WebDAV using Macromedia UltraDev.   Accessing WebDAV on any supported server from Macromedia UltraDev 4 requires you to be running UltraDev Version 4.01. In general, if you are using Dreamweaver, you must also use UltraDev 4.01.

• Using WebDAV with WebFolders on Windows 2000.   If you intend to use WebDAV functionality with WebFolders on Windows 2000, you must install Windows Office 2000 SR-1a Service Pack on the computer running the server.

Development issues

Development environment issues

• Compatibility with pcAnywhere.  You may have trouble running exteNd Director with pcAnywhere, due to a known compatibility issue between pcAnywhere and Java. (Products similar to pcAnywhere may also cause problems.) See the exteNd Director configuration file (bin\xd.conf) to learn about a switch you can set to address this situation.

Project issues

• Setting up EJB projects with EJB subprojects.   You may have two or more EJB projects that share some common session or entity beans. In that case you can separate those shared beans into subprojects for inclusion in your main EJB projects. When doing so, follow these steps to ensure a proper project structure:
  1. Use the EJB-client architecture to organize the shared bean classes. This involves setting up two projects for them: an EJB-implementation JAR project (containing SessionBean objects) and an EJB-client JAR project (containing home and remote interfaces).

  2. Use the resulting EJB-client JAR project as your shared subproject. This involves adding its project (SPF) file to the classpath of your main EJB projects.

  If you don't follow this approach and instead add the project file of an old-style (combined) EJB JAR to the classpath of your main EJB projects, you may have problems when editing deployment descriptors (including messages about beans not found).

Web Services issues

• Returning XML elements from Web Service operations.   When using the Web Service Wizard to generate files for a Web Service consumer, you'll typically want to accept the default mapping of XML elements to Java types. But if your application needs to work with the XML elements themselves and the Web Service is document-style, you can uncheck the option Map complex XML types to Java types. This generates consumer files (stubs and so on) that use java.lang.Object to return an XML element. You can then write your own code to cast the returned object to org.w3c.dom.Element and perform element operations on it.

  An alternative is to use WSSDK (Web Services SDK, formerly jBroker^TM Web) directly when generating files. With the WSSDK compilers, you can specify your own type mappings to return org.w3c.dom.Element from calls to Web Service operations.

  If the Web Service is RPC-style, the notion of returning the raw XML is inherently problematic (since RPC-style involves ad hoc elements processed via encoding rules). As a result, the Web Service Wizard does not support unchecking the option Map complex XML types to Java types for RPC-style Web Services. However, it is possible to use the WSSDK compilers and type mapping facilities manually to work with the XML instead of Java types.

• Using a proxy server.   If you are using a proxy server, you need to specify the proxy host and its port in xwb.conf, in the exteNd Director bin directory (see xwb.conf for details). If you set these values, everything will work fine -- as long as you don't use the Deployment Plan Editor, which communicates with the Novell exteNd Application Server using the exteNd HTTP implementation instead of Sun's. The exteNd implementation does not use the proxy server system properties. Thus the Registry Manager and Web Service Wizard will fail when they need to contact a proxy server (for example, if the wizard needs to find a DTD or Schema outside the firewall). You need to restart exteNd Director for the proxy server support to work again. (PPR 30320)

• Generating an EJB session bean Web Service.   To generate a Web Service for an EJB session bean, you must start by providing the Web Service Wizard with the home or remote interface. Starting with the SessionBean object doesn't work at present. (PPR 26241)

Compile and build issues

• Classpath for EJBs using EJB-client architecture.   Before you build a standalone EJB project using the EJB-client architecture, you must add the EJB-client JAR project (SPF) file to the classpath of the EJB-implementation JAR project. Use the Classpath/Dependencies tab of the Project Settings dialog. If you use the Project Wizard to generate your EJB-client JAR project, this will be done for you.

• Java files not to compile.   When you add Java source files to a project, there's currently no way to flag certain ones as not-to-be-compiled. As a workaround, you can change the file extension of such files (for example, MyClass.java.txt).

Deployment issues

• Server profile names and properties.   When you create a server profile, make sure the profile's name is not the same as the value in its server name or database name property. Otherwise, profile information may not display properly when requested. (PPR 33997)

 

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