Expere Server Tools Change Log

These are the tools that are included with the Server Tools Install:

Expere Administration Tool
Customer Facing Outlines
Build Doc Previews
Data Dictionary Builder

Revision 2016.3.1 11/18/2016 - TBD

Enhancements

Performance and Stability Enhancement
Type: Enhancement Reference: 419150 Compliance Impacts: This item is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: Expere Administration Tool User Guide
Summary: This enhancement improves the efficiency of building Expere content.
Technical Notes: Each build output Org folder contains a file of the name contents.manifest. This file lists each file in the build output for that org (its path and name) and the hash of the file contents. This file loads with the other build outputs to an Expere KnowledgeBase database.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires a Expere Server Tools (Expere Administration Tool) update.

Support for DiscretePartyID in Static Documents
Type: Enhancement Reference: 419292 Compliance Impacts: This item is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: No documentation impact
Summary: A new element, DiscretePartyID, has been implemented for use within static documents. Note: DiscretePartyID is only supported beginning with version 2016.3.1. Previous releases do not support this element.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools (Expere Administration Tool) update.

ESignature.xml - Empty Suppress Fillable Field Control File for Content Build
Type: Enhancement Reference: 418862 Compliance Impacts: This item is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: No documentation impact
Summary: This enhancement provides for packaging an empty instance of the Suppress Fillable Field Control File with ReqAdmin/RequirementsAdmin, and places it into the content build output folder when there is no fillable field control file in the source repository.
Technical Notes: The Build command places the Esignature.xml file with other core files in the build output when it does not exist in the source repository. If it does exist in the source repository, it copies that file to the build output folder, along with the other core files.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools (Expere Administration Tool) update.

Load ESignature.xml - Suppress Fillable Field Control File to Expere
Type: Enhancement Reference: 418863 Compliance Impacts: This item is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: No documentation impact
Summary: This enhancement provides the loading of the ESignature.xml file when executing the Load command.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools update.

Process Schema Change: Support Enum datatype, table, xml artifact
Type: Enhancement Reference: 410388 Compliance Impacts: This item is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: No documentation impact
Summary: A new Enum table has been created for TXN to include all enumeration metadata. For VMP, the database has been modified to to accommodate the enumeration changes. A corresponding query and XML output file is also created or modified for both TXN and VMP.
Technical Notes: The enum table exists in both XLDD.mdb and workingdicitonary.mdb. This produces enum.xml and vmp_enum.xml. Note: The VMP version is a replacement. The TXN is new.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools update.

Revision 2016.3 08/05/2016 - 11/17/2016

Enhancements

Java updated to 1.7
Type: Enhancement Reference: 412714 Compliance Impacts: This item is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: No documentation impact
Summary: Java 1.7.0_80 is now packaged with Expere Runtime.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools update.

Default ContentAdmin Build No Longer Processes Javascript
Type: Enhancement Reference: 395769 Compliance Impacts: This item is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: Expere Administration Tool User Guide
Summary: This enhancement makes all Javascript code optional during the build process.
Technical Notes: The default build procedure remains unchanged. If JS files are located within the repository they will automatically be included in the build.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools update.

ReqAdmin - Ability to Create Stores and Types
Type: Enhancement Reference: 405223 Compliance Impacts: This item is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: Administration Tool User Guide
Summary: This enhancement allows you to add Stores and Types to a SQL database for use with OPPSA.
Technical Notes: Utilizing the prepoppsadb option of the reqadmin command line, Stores and Types can be added to a SQL database without loading an empty repository. For more information, refer to the Administration Tool User Guide.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools update.

REQAdmin now available as Nuget Package
Type: Enhancement Reference: 405809 Compliance Impacts: This item is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: No documentation impact
Summary: REQAdmin has been made available as a Nuget package for installing Expere/OPPSA databases.
Technical Notes: The ReqAdmin Build Output is available for commandline only. The ReqAdmin commandline zip file is available in Nuget for Octopus Deploy to call for setting up the Types and Stores table for an initial deploy of the Expere/OPPSA database.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools update.

Javascript Unit Tests During ContentAdmin Build
Type: Enhancement Reference: 406580 Compliance Impacts: This item is a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: Administration Tool User Guide
Summary: This enhancement performs Javascript unit tests when the ContentAdmin build is run.
Technical Notes: Any errors in the unit tests are logged in the build output report. Tests are performed on all standard and customized repositories. Tests are performed when using either the command line or the user interface.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires a Expere Server Tools update.

ReqAdmin and Authoring Web Service updates for all "core" files
Type: Enhancement Reference:398907 Compliance Impacts: This item is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: No documentation impact
Summary: This enhancement loads all "core" files from each precedence unit to the authoring web service.
Technical Notes: Files loaded to the authoring web service include js, manifest, .gifs and binary files.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools update.

New DDB Attributes to Identify UCD Mapped Data
Type: Enhancement Reference: 400265 Compliance Impacts: This item is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: Expere Data Dictionary Viewer User Guide
Summary: Three new fields have been added to the Data Dictionary Attributes: NPI, UCD and UCD Mapping.
Technical Notes: NPI: indicates the data is Non-public information and is to be deleted from transactions before being shared. UCD: indicates the data is to be included in Uniform Closing Datasets. UCD Mapping: indicates the dataset is available for UCD mapping.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools update.

ContentAdmin 'Build'-Support Directly Processed REQs-Config Option
Type: Enhancement Reference: 397767 Compliance Impacts: This item is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: No documentation impact
Summary: This enhancement allows you to produce build output for directly processed REQs using either the user interface or the command line.
Technical Notes: An option is now available in the configuration file ( C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\WKFS\ExpereAdministrativeTools\Preferences.xml) Option name: REQBuild Option value: True Syntax: <REQBuild>True</REQBuild> When enabled, another option is visible under the ReaAdmin Tools menu called Expere Content Build REQ format.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools (Expere Administration Tool).

DDB - Javascript Calc Input and Output Data Point Distinction
Type: Enhancement Reference: 395687 Compliance Impacts: This item is a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: Administration Tool User Guide
Summary This enhancement provides the ability to identify all schema points needed to map data when sending a transaction to Expere.
Technical Notes The following data points from the javascript files are now included in the data dictionary (.eddv): JS Input JS Output Expere Response
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools (Data Dictionary Builder) update.

ContentAdmin 'Build' Output Includes Manifest/js Artifacts
Type: Enhancement Reference: 395456 Compliance Impacts: This item is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: Administration Tool User Guide
Summary: This enhancement ensures that all Manifest and JS files are included in the repository after the build output.
Technical Notes: This functionality is available while running a build from either the command line or user interface.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools (Expere Administration Tool).

Revision 2016.2 04/16/2016 - 08/04/2016

Note: This update includes all changes from 2016.1 Expere Administration Tool release.

Enhancements

HTML Outlines
Type: Enhancement Reference: 377773 Compliance Impacts: This enhancement is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: Expere Administration Tool User Guide
Summary: HTML Outlines have been incorporated so that when a file is too large to create a PDF, users can instead create a HTML file.
Technical Notes: A switch (//HTML) can be added to the command line to create HTML instead of PDF. If the switch is not included, the standard PDF output is generated.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools (Customer Facing Outlines) update.

Defects

Reqadmin Prep Switch readOnly Attribute Value Now Uppercase
Type: Defect Reference: 380718 Compliance Impacts: This defect is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: No documentation impact.
Issue: The 2016.1 version of the Expere Server Tools introduces new behavior whereby the prep switch on the reqadmin executable will change the value of the “readOnly” attribute on <Note> rows from a lower-case ‘true’ to an upper-case ‘True.’
Solution: The prep command has been modified to set the value back to lower-case “true”. This does not introduce any functional differences, but it will be displayed as a difference on impact analysis reports if the baseline build was prepped with a tool version prior to the release of this fix.
Implementation Notes: This requires an Expere Server Tools (Expere Administration Tool) update.

ReqAdmin ‘build’ Issue Causing Content to Drop Static Document Barcodes
Type: Defect Reference: 381766 Compliance Impacts: This defect is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: No documentation impact.
Issue: An issue was identified in which the BarcodeTarget element was being removed when building content. This element is required to apply a barcode to static documents.
Solution: The ReqAdmin build code was modified to prevent the removal of the BarcodeTarget element.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools (Expere Administration Tool) update.

Automatic removal of stylesheet references
Type: Enhancement Reference: PBI 379029 Compliance Impacts: This item is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: No documentation impact
Summary: This enhancement modified the Content Admin ‘build’ process to automatically remove duplicate stylesheet include statements that are already included in the parent WKFS_Styleguide stylesheet.
Technical Notes: Previously, there were three include statements (one each for file system, SQL and Oracle) that duplicated include statements within the parent stylesheet WKFS_Styleguide. Note: For details on the manual removal of inclusions in any customized stylesheets, refer to Java 8 and Saxon upgrade: DB and File System script process available.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools (Expere Administration Tool) update.

Note: Revision 2016.1.2: No changes were made to Server Tools for 2016.1.2

Revision 2016.1.1 05/05/2016

Defects

Random ERLType Generation error
Type: Defect Reference: 382690 Compliance Impacts: This defect is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: No documentation impact.
Issue: The 2016.1 version of the Expere Server Tools introduces intermittent failures when building content (error message refers to "unexpected token. Expecting white space."). The failure is inconsistent and not always reproducible on the same repository or build attempt.
Solution: A temporary fix has been implemented whereby a document with this failure will be automatically be rebuilt as part of the build process (up to three rebuild attempts) and the error is logged as a warning (text message: "WARNING This document initially failed to generate properly formatted erl for rule: <document name>").
Implementation Notes: This requires an Expere Server Tools (Expere Administration Tool) update.

Cannot connect to database using user and password
Type: Defect Reference: 379995 Compliance Impacts: This defect is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: No documentation impact.
Issue: An issue was identified in ReqAdmin when a user passed a connection string to the buildDB command. The database connection class was not correctly parsing the user name or password, which resulted in an error message that the user could not connect via either trusted credentials or via the user and password, as they are both null.
Solution: Outdated methods of connecting to the database were replaced with current technology methods.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools (Expere Administration Tool) update.

ReqAdmin ‘build’ Issue Causing Content to Drop Static Document Barcodes
Type: Defect Reference: 381766 Compliance Impacts: This defect is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: No documentation impact.
Issue: An issue was identified in which the BarcodeTarget element was being removed when building content. This element is required to apply a barcode to static documents.
Solution: The ReqAdmin build code was modified to prevent the removal of the BarcodeTarget element.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools (Expere Administration Tool) update.

Revision 2016.1 11/05/2015 - 04/08/2016

Enhancements

Modified SCHEMA.PKG Generation
Type: Enhancement Reference: PBI 318597 Compliance Impacts: This enhancement is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation: Expere Administration Tool User Guide
Summary: Support was implemented for supplying a predefined document print order in the PacketType\DocumentRefs element.
Technical Notes: With this change the content builder will generate a document data requirement SCHEMA file when a predefined PKG file is present in the source repository. The SCHEMA file contains all the data points referenced by all the document package selection rules for each document referencing a given package. Packages correspond to phases defined in the phase group PHAS file.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools (Expere Administration Tool) update.

Expere Administration Tool Time Out Configurable
Type: Enhancement Reference: PBI 360260 Compliance Impacts: This enhancement is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation: Administration Tool User Guide
Summary: The Requirements Administration application has been enhanced to be able to configure load timeout to avoid failure loading huge repositories. The default timeout changed from the current hard coded value of 5 minutes, to 10 minutes.
Technical Notes: Modified ReqAdmin.exe.config and RequirementsAdmin.exe.config to include new key in appSettings group: <add key="LoadTimeout" value="10"/> Value 10 corresponds to 10 minutes. If key "LoadTimeout" does not exist in config file, internal load timeout will be set to 10 by default.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools (Expere Administration Tool) update.

ReqAdmin – Content References Not Updating in Single Pass using ‘Update’ command
Reference: PBI 360269 Compliance Impacts: This enhancement is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation: No documentation impact.
Summary: Previously, the ReqAdmin update command was not fully updating content references in one pass, requiring a workaround. After running the update command and updating the authoring web service with the updated repository, when opening an REQ file in the RE3 tool, messaging indicated that content references still needed to be updated.
Technical Notes: For Nested ContentReferences, the existing logic automatically ran the update process twice. If more than two nested levels existed, the update command had to be ran again which then update two additional levels. The command would need to be executed multiple times depending upon the number of nested content references. The logic was modified to update 'all' nested references in one single pass. Each time the update command was executed, the REQ filesize would grow as a result of updating contentreference elements with new IDs but leaving behind the old as unused rules. The logic was modified to update the parent content reference and any nested content references and update at the same time. This prevents new unused rules from being created but does remove any from existing repositories (development of a function to remove unused rules will be addressed in separate PBI). To improve performance, caching has been added at org structure level so that a child org that needs to update from a parent/root, won't re-update the parent/root if that was already done. Previously the caching was happening at the org level instead of org Structure level.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools (Expere Administration Tool) update.

CPU/Memory Improvements
Type: Enhancement Reference: PBI 357091 Compliance Impacts: This enhancement is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation: No Documentation Impact
Summary: Modified the ‘build’ functionality to improve inefficiencies with CPU and Memory. The build functionality is used both by the Administration Tool and as a ReqAdmin command (‘build’).
Technical Notes: Improved memory leaks in all areas except PTRParsing section. Very large repositories may still experience high usage of CPU/Memory due to the PTRParsing re-write not completed.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools (Expere Administration Tool) update.

Remove Unused/Orphaned Rules Command
Reference: PBI 364198 Compliance Impacts: This enhancement is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation: Expere Administration Tool User Guide
Summary: You can run this command against a Repository to remove all unused/orphaned rules from all documents in the Repository. This will help alleviate space issues and may help improve build times.
Technical Notes: We have added a new command to the ReqAdmin command line that will allow users to modify a Repository in order to remove all unused rules. The command line for this is: removeorphanedrules <Repository Path>
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools (Expere Administration Tool) update.

New Command for Build, Repository, Preview and Outline artifacts
Type: Enhancement Reference: 372080 Compliance Impacts: None Documentation Impacts: None
Summary: A new command has been created that allows for the merging of Build, Repository, Preview and Outline artifacts.
Technical Notes: This new command allows for a user to pass a repository, its build output and optionally preview and outlines outputs to create a manifest. The command will then output all the combined artifacts on either a singular line of business basis or on a combined line of business basis depending on how the user wishes to receive the output.
Implementation Notes: The enhancement ONLY requires an Expere Server Tools update, but it is advised to only be used internally as it will help with our content build process.

Data Dictionary Builder - Ability to Read Metadata from XML File
Type: Enhancement Reference: 357373 Compliance Impacts: This is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: No documentation impact.
Summary: New funtionality allows metadata to be read from the XML file in addition to the call to MS Access. This means customers can now build their own dictionaries.
Technical Notes: The -xldd command was modified to allow to reading from an XML file: VMP: -xldd C:\DDVCreation\Schemas\vmp_workingdictionary.xml ExpereTXN: -xldd C:\DDVCreation\Schemas\workingdictionary.xml
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools (Data Dictionary Builder) update.

Defects

Administration UI Failing to Build to Database
Type: Defect Reference: 357650 Compliance Impacts: This defect is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: No documentation impact.
Issue: An issue was identified in which a customer was attempting to load a recent repository to their Authoring Database using the Expere Administration user interface, and the process was failing.
Solution: A case mismatch was corrected between the Expere Administration tool and the Authoring web service database.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools (Expere Administration Tool) update.

REQ Admin - False Positive Warnings During Build Command
Type: Defect Reference: 367260 Compliance Impacts: This defect is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: No documentation impact.
Issue: Warnings were being reported that were valid in the schema but were the result of an error when resolving XPath context.
Solution: The number of false positives being returned by the ReqAdmin Content Build Tool has been reduced.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools (Expere Administration Tool) update.

REQ Admin - Build Command Out Of Memory Exception
Type: Defect Reference: 367262 Compliance Impacts: This defect is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: No documentation impact.
Issue: An Out Of Memory exception was occurring when using the build command on large repositories.
Solution: Out of Memory Exceptions for large repositories has been fixed.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools (Expere Administration Tool) update.

Revision 2015.3.2 05/16/2016

Defects

2015.3.2 Server Tools Hotfix
Type: Defect Reference: 382603 Compliance Impacts: This item is not a compliance or regulatory issue. Documentation Impacts: No documentation impact
Summary: Issues were discovered with the 2016.1 Expere Server Tools release whereby the ‘build’ process produced inaccurate ERL formatted output intermittently.
Technical Notes: A 2015.3.2 hotfix was created from the 2015.3.1 release to include changes required for the TRID Rounding for the ERL build output (351029-New Total First, then Round Method). This 2015.3.2 Hotfix includes only the TRID Rounding enhancements; it does not include any other enhancements/defects outlined in the 2016.1 release notes.
Implementation Notes: This feature requires an Expere Server Tools update. Expere Knowledge Base content repositories that are built using this Expere Server Tools Hotfix 2015.3.2 must use the April release of the Expere Engine (B3537) to render accurate PDF output for TRID Documents. The version of Requirements Editor included in this Hotfix is the same version that was released with 2016.1.