Note: Special attention should be given to the items highlighted in yellow as they will require additional planning/steps for your organization pre and/or post-upgrade if the view/tool affected is being used in your installation.

With the R38 release, all users must be assigned to a license. There are two use cases - automatic assignment to a Default license, or manually specify license assignment. Instructions will be included in your upgrade package. 

Automatic assignment

The most common scenario is an installation with one license file identified as the Default license. This will work in the same way as it has before.

With automatic assignment, users are automatically assigned to the default license. No additional action is needed. If multiple license keys are used, one can be designated as the default. At any time, an Administrator can change the Default designation from one license to another, and/or assign specific users to any specific license.

Manual assignment

For installations with multiple licenses and/or where no default license will be designated, Administrators have the option to manually handle user license assignment, In this case, assignment can be done for a single user via the Users tab.: 

Or, alternatively, as a batch assign operation via the Licenses tab. 

When upgrading to R38 given this use case, initial assignment must be made for all existing users. 

This will not need to be done for future upgrades for existing licenses. 

It is important to note that if an assignment is not made for a user, and no license is designated as the Default, the user will not be able to log in until they are assigned to an available license.

It is now possible for Administrators to use the swAdmin2 tool and the Path Query Language to restrict any of the following standard capabilities (actions) in the swExplorer client. 

• Printing documents
• Downloading documents
• Copying document content
• Printing reports
• Downloading reports
• Copying report content
• Exporting XML
• Copying XML content
• Exporting grids to Excel

For more information, see Restricting Capabilities.

Note: Although a first version has been available in earlier releases for evaluation purposes, we are officially introducing the feature now. 

The swAdmin2 tool now includes a first version of an API transactions display which will provide administrators with statistics on API usage per license. 

• View total transactions data
• View daily transactions data 
• Filter by preset or custom time period
• Refresh data for current time period
• Export 2 years of transactions data

Release R38 includes a new license format. Upgrades will require replacing existing licenses. This is a breaking change.

The Licenses tab now clearly displays the following additional information for each uploaded license key file: 

• License name
• Server name

Note: The Servers drop-down field is only applicable when licenses valid for different servers are uploaded. 

A common use case when writing api programs and extensions is searching for items with a given attribute value, for example, get all requirements with a given requirement id. This is traditionally done by creating a filter and calling IswQ. Due to performance reasonS, we have added a specific call on IswQ to do this:

        IswItems GetItemsWithAttributeValue(IswItemType itemType, bool includeSubTypes,

          IswAttributeType attributeType, string attributeValue);

This call should be significantly faster (e.g., up to 80%) and put lower load on the server than using filters.

It can be used for attributes which can be expressed as a string, e.g., string and integer.

The following methods have been added to the API. 

Broker.FindUserWithForeignId

Returns user with given foreign id, or null if user with that name does not exist. If for some reason, there exists several users with the same foreign id, this methods returns null.

Broker.HasUserWithForeignId

Returns if a user with foreign id exists. If for some reason, there are several users with the same foreign id this method returns true.

Refer to the R38 version of SystemWeaverClientAPI.XML for more information. 

We have improved how exceptions thrown in an extension are displayed. For example, a stack trace will be shown, if possible.

To support this, we added a method to the IswExtensionInfo interface. For the improved exception message to apply to existing extensions, the extensions must be manually updated with ExtensionInfo inheriting from ExtensionInfoBase:

    public class ExtensionInfo : ExtensionInfoBase, IswExtensionInfo

Visualization

There is now a first version of a sequence diagram visualization using the built-in configurable graph view. The sequence diagram supports the following:

• Lifeline of different types (Actor, Object,Boundary, Control, and Entity)
• Messages
• Gate
• EndPoint
• Fragment of different types (Alternative, Optional, Parallel, Loop, Critical region, Negative,  Sequence diagram,..etc)
• Frame

Edit Mode

In addition to using the built-in configurable graph to view a sequence diagram, it is now possible to edit the sequence diagram directly in the view. With this first version of editability, you can perform the following: 

•  Add/New/Remove all sequence diagram objects:
  1. Any type of LifeLine
  2. Any type of Fragments
  3. Frame
  4. EndPoint
  5. Gate
• Connect different sequence diagram objects using messages:
  1. Gate -> LifeLine
  2. LifeLine-> LifeLine
  3. LifeLine-> EndPoint
  4. Self message

It is now possible to control the size of all node shapes, as well as the size of a node caption.   

This new custom size option is available for the following node shapes:

• <Actor/>
• <AndGate/>
• <Chevron/>
• <Ellipse/>
• <OrGate/>
• <Parallelogram/>
• <Rectangle/>
• <RectangularPentagon/>
• <Triangle/>
• <Circle> 
• <Boundary/>
• <Control/>
• <Note/>
• <Diamond/>
• <Package/>

Example

<AndGate width="" height="" minWidth="" maxWidth=""  
minHeight="" maxHeight=""/>

For editing in the configurable graph view, the <RemovePart part=".." caption=”…”/> tag now supports list of part in the attribute part=”..”.

Example

<RemovePart part="Context:/back-to-part::Req" caption="..."/>

There is now support for configuring the sub-menu using  "...(->)...(->)..." in the caption attribute for <AddPart/> and <RemovePart/>.

Example

<RemovePart part="Context:/back-to-part::ReqSection" caption="Menu X (->) Menu X.1 (->) Menu X.1.1 (->)Remove Req from Section #{Owner.Name}"/>     

The Component graph extension now supports different signal item types and part types. There is a new attribute for the <Signal> tag called itemSids. For multiple signal types, you would use this attribute instead of itemSid to list the SIDs separated by a semi-colon. 

Also, there is a new attribute for the <InPort> and <OutPort> tags called partSids. For multiple signal part types, you would use this attribute instead of partSid to list the SIDs separated by a semi-colon. 

Note: For backward compatibility, the itemSid and partSid  attributes can still be used when only one signal type exists. However, itemSid and itemSids cannot be used together, and partSid and partSids cannot be used together.  

Examples

<ComponentGraphConfig>

   ....

   <Function itemSid="BIDA">

       <InPort partSid="IREC"/>

       <OutPort partSid="ISEN"/>

   </Function>

   ....

   <Signal itemSid="ARSI"/>

   ....

   <Components>

     <Component itemSid="ARAP" partSid="ITFC">

       <InPort partSid="ARRP"/>

       <OutPort partSid="ARPP"/>

     </Component>

   </Components>

   ....

</ComponentGraphConfig>

<ComponentGraphConfig>

   ...

   <Function itemSid="BIDA">

      <InPort partSids="IREC;IREC1"/>

      <OutPort partSids="ISEN;ISEN1"/>

   </Function>

   ....

   <Signal itemSids="ARSI;ARSI1;.."/>

   ....

   <Components>

     <Component itemSid="ARAP" partSid="ITFC">

       <InPort partSids="ARRP;ARRP1"/>

       <OutPort partSids="ARPP;ARPP1"/>

   </Component>

   </Components>

   ....

</ComponentGraphConfig>

For multiple signal types, the swExplorer will present the user with a menu that includes all the possible signals according to the configuration, as shown below.

There is now support for configuring the caption of the <AddPart/> tag. The caption can be a String or PathQuery.

Example: 

<AddPart owner="..." partType=".." caption="#{PathQuery}"/>

<Graph>

 <Mappings>

   <MappingItem id="" leftCaption="..." 

rightCaption=".."  distinctMappingPerPair="true" 

multipleDistinctMappingPerPair="true">

   ......

   </MappingItem>

 <Mappings>

 ...

The database version identifies the version of the internal database schema used by SystemWeaver. With  R38, the version has been upgraded from 1.42 to 1.43. This is a breaking change. 

System Administrators use the swDatabaseManager to update the database version. See Updating the Database Version.

• Review the Prerequisites for the update operation outlined in above article
• The database update operation takes about 1 min.
• Maintain a copy of the original database
• If you need to restart the Update operation, close the application in between update attempts.
• If running a mirror server:
  1. Journaling must be cleared and re-initialized. Previous .swjournal file cannot be used.
  2. New mirror .cache files must be created. Previous .cache files cannot be used.

There is now basic support for performing New version and replace recursively in the structure tree. 

The option will now display as New version and replace in structure. 

As before, the option creates a new version of the selected part's item and replaces the item with the new version. 

Now, it will also do the same for any part items located above the selected item as long as:

• You have access right to the item, and 
• There are no later versions of the item

A dialog will indicate the Action for each part's item.  If one or both of the above two criteria are not true, the New version and replace in structure operation will not be performed.

In the below example, the user has write access to all items in the structure above the selected item, and there are no existing newer versions. The replace operation will be performed on each of them as shown below.  

If, at any point, an item or sub-structure does not meet the above criteria, the dialog will display this and perform no actions. In the below example, the user does not have access to "ECU2" and, therefore, cannot take out a new version on it or its sub-structure.

The New version and replace operation has been optimized. Depending on the selected structure, operation time is now up to 100% faster. Below are two examples.

In seconds

With R37, we optimized the loading  of structures with simple parts. In R38, we have taken the first step to optimize the loading of structures containing structural parts, e.g., such as Test structures and views with lots of nodes. Further improvements to this are planned for later releases. The improvement times will differ depending on the number of structural parts, etc.. Below are a two small examples.

In seconds

The Data type editor now supports the compu method category BITFIELD_TEXTABLE:

The interval type is considered to be CLOSED at all times.

To specify the values for each bit(s), click the button to the right of Values to access an editor.

It is possible to set a value for each bit and also to move values depending on which bit value (1 or 0) they represent.

Note: It is not possible to save the bit field values if there are too many rows added.

For 1 bit (i.e., 0 - 0) there are two possible values: 1 and 0. 

For 2 bits (i.e., 0 - 1) there are four possible values: 00, 01, 10, and 11. And so on.

There are built-in consistency checks, e.g.,:

• No duplicates of names
• Max < Min
• Min > Max
• Negative Min/Max

If an error occurs, this will be indicated in red in the indicator column to the far left. An explanation of the error is available via the hover tip: